Surly Bonds
by Goldleaf83
Summary: One downed airman poses far more challenges than ordinary rescues. How will Hogan cope?
1. Chapter 1: New Guests

_I have loved __Hogan's Heroes__ since the 1970s, but none of its characters are mine; they were created by Bernard Fein and Albert S. Ruddy. I acknowledge their ownership and that of Bing Crosby Productions and intend no copyright infringement. At no point will I or others profit monetarily on this story._

Chapter 1: New Guests

Schultz paused outside the door to Barracks 2. It was his first stop on his current mission, and he was both looking forward to it and dreading it simultaneously. All the men inside would be delighted to see him . . . or at least to see what he was carrying. But he sometimes feared for his life on these occasions. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and announced loudly, "Mail call!"

He was instantly swarmed by the men, all of them shouting, tugging at his uniform, pulling at his arm, bumping against his backside . . . where had his gun gone? He grabbed just in time to prevent one of the prisoners from actually seizing the bag that held the envelopes and packages. He didn't see which one it was, but he could rule one man out: if it had been Newkirk, he knew he would never have felt it. He was trying to outshout the whole dozen of them without success when he heard a very welcome addition to the chaos.

"All right, everybody, pipe down. Give Schultz some breathing room!"

"_Danke_, Colonel Hogan!" said Schultz, sighing in relief that the senior officer, drawn out of his quarters by the uproar, had come to his rescue. But that relief was short-lived when Hogan himself snatched the bag holding the mail and poked around in it.

"Colonel Hogan, _I_ am the one who is supposed to hand out the mail!" Despite his bulk and deep voice, the big sergeant's voice approached a whine.

"Sure, Schultz, you do that," Hogan answered absently. The colonel's actions did not match his words, though, as he continued to sift through the letters. He pulled out one, then a second, before handing the bag back to Schultz. He called out over the grousing of the men in his barracks, "Okay, fellas, Schultz'll get what's in here to you."

The colonel then turned and headed for his own room. In the midst of the clamor, no one noticed a small frown furrowed between his brows as he looked down at the envelopes in his hand, as though they somehow weren't what he had been hoping for.

ooOoo

Kinch looked up from monitoring the radio when he heard footsteps on the ladder. "Hey Colonel," he greeted his CO as Hogan skipped over the final rung to land with a light spring on the packed earth tunnel floor.

"What's the news from London?" Hogan asked.

"They've had intelligence that a munitions convoy should be coming through here in a couple of days and want us to confirm it, then take care of it if possible," Kinch informed him, handing him the paper on which he had written the message.

Hogan nodded as he scanned through it. He checked his watch. "Shouldn't Newkirk and Carter be back soon?"

"_Oui_," LeBeau answered, coming in from the next chamber where they stored the uniforms they used for undercover missions and a stock of civilian clothes for outfitting downed fliers they were helping back to England. "But we heard a raid earlier; it sometimes takes longer if they find a crew." He shrugged, hands in his trousers pockets. "Maybe they got lucky tonight."

"As long as they aren't stopping by the Hofbräu in town for Newkirk to get lucky," Kinch griped, still somewhat steamed at the Englishman for having endangered the operation a couple of months earlier by flirting with a woman who turned out to be a Gestapo agent.

"I don't think he'll do that again. He's learned his lesson about staying professional," Hogan said grimly; the fallout from that mistake had been hard enough to repress even the usually ebullient Newkirk for a good while. "They aren't yet overdue," he added after a moment, steering the conversation back to its original topic.

Just then they heard the scuffle of feet from the emergency tunnel that ran into the woods well beyond the camp fence. Carter emerged first, a big grin on his face, three unfamiliar men in American uniforms behind him, all of whom looked to be in their late twenties.

"We found all six of a B-26 Marauder crew, Colonel!" he announced with excitement.

"Where's Newkirk?" Hogan asked with a nod at the three newcomers.

"He'll be right along with the others. He said he'd bring up the rear and make sure they all got in. They were just coming down into the tunnel behind us."

"Good. I'm Colonel Hogan," he introduced himself to the three newcomers. The three traded startled looks before the tallest man, a blond, stepped forward.

"First Lieutenant Smoot," he said, taking the colonel's hand and shaking firmly. "And Sergeants Burgin and Toft," he added, gesturing toward the more average sized brown- and sandy-haired men behind him. "Our CO is behind us—he wanted to make sure everyone got down into safety first."

"Welcome to Stalag 13," Hogan smiled reassuringly. At the sound of more feet shuffling down the tunnel he turned to welcome the next group.

Kinch, glancing up from his seat, saw the colonel's face go ashen as he gazed at the group now entering the room: Newkirk, his face serious and apprehensive; one more sergeant with light brown hair, easily the smallest of the bunch; a tall captain his early thirties; and then another second lieutenant, with black hair, clearly several years younger than the others. The last guy couldn't be more than nineteen, if that, Kinch thought, looking over their latest arrivals. The Army seemed to be putting just kids up in the sky now; no wonder the colonel looked a bit sick over their new guest. Something else rang in the back of his mind: the kid looked familiar somehow. . . .

"Bobby?" the colonel rasped out, staring in shock at the new second lieutenant.

The young lieutenant looked equally surprised. "_Dad?_"


	2. Chapter 2: Settling In

Colonel Hogan swiftly crossed the small room, his eyes locked on the kid, pulling him into a fierce bear hug. The younger man returned the embrace just as tightly, burying his face momentarily in his father's shoulder. For a long moment they stood that way, and awed silence reigned in the tunnel, till the colonel broke away, though only far enough to be able to look his son up and down, both hands still gripping the young man's shoulders.

"You're all right? Not hurt?"

"No, I'm fine. Really," the younger man responded, clearly a bit dazed by the reunion.

Hogan nodded, then visibly marshaled himself to turn and look at the rest of the men crowding the radio room, who were to a man all staring at him, slack-jawed. Slinging his right arm around the younger man's shoulders, he said to his own crew, "Fellas, meet my son, Second Lieutenant Robert Theodore Hogan."

Kinch gathered himself to respond, since obviously everyone else was too shell-shocked to say anything. "We're pleased to meet you, Lieutenant—though the circumstances aren't the best."

"Could've been a lot worse," the younger Hogan managed to answer, which provoked a series of nods from everyone, breaking the tableau that had gripped the other eight men.

"Any crash everyone walks away from is a good one," the colonel replied, rallying enough to drop his grip on his son after one further tight squeeze and turn to the captain that commanded the Marauder crew. "Carter said you got them all? You were flying with a complement of six, not seven?"

The captain nodded. "Our usual configuration for our _Lucky Strike_. Just as well, given how this mission turned out."

Hogan nodded and offered his hand. "Colonel Robert E. Hogan," he introduced himself.

"Captain Richard Luck, sir," the other officer replied, gripping strongly.

"And damn well named," muttered the short sergeant that had come in with him.

The captain glanced at him with a look composed of equal parts amusement and affection, with a slight dash of irritation. "And the rest of my crew: our bombardier/navigator Lieutenant Smoot; our three gunners, Sergeants Burgin, Toft, and of course Watts, who likes to provide commentary." He eyed the colonel and added with a slightly sardonic tone, "And you appear to know my copilot pretty well, sir."

Colonel Hogan's eyes returned to Lieutenant Hogan, who bit his lip and looked downwards. "Yes, well, I had a big head start on that—but it's been quite a while since we've seen each other."

"Nearly four years," the lieutenant answered as he looked back up at his father.

Kinch frowned. The lieutenant's voice had an unexpected slight edge to it.

The colonel's eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn't pursue the point. Crossing his arms loosely around his chest, he switched topics. "Time for me to introduce my crew here. You've met Sergeant Carter and Corporal Newkirk," he nodded at each of them, "and Sergeant Kinchloe and Corporal LeBeau make up the rest of the core team. You may see some others over the next few days, helping out as we get you ready to head back to England."

Hope broke across most of the faces of the Marauder crew like morning sun coming from behind clouds, followed by a swift hubbub of reaction. "Back to England?!" "We're goin' back home?!"

Their captain, though, raised his eyebrows. "You can get us—all _six_ of us—back to England—all the way through Nazi Germany and across the Channel, sir?" He either couldn't or wasn't even bothering to try to disguise the skepticism in his voice.

"Oh sure, we do it all the time," Carter put in, a smile on his face. "Papers, IDs, civilian clothes, we make everything you need."

"_Oui_," LeBeau added in support. "_Le colonel_ started our 'travelers' aid society.'"

"I thought you were in a prison camp." Lieutenant Hogan hadn't shifted his gaze from his father.

"Can you think of a better cover for an outfit to help downed fliers and escaped POWs?" the colonel returned, a slight smile on his lips though it didn't travel as far as his eyes. "We'll get the ball rolling tomorrow morning after roll call, interviewing you for the best fit for identification papers and getting measurements for civilian outfits." He glanced around at the Marauder crew. "We've got bunks down here, and LeBeau will see to it you get meals, so you'll be relatively comfortable." He paused for a moment, then added, "You'll all stay down here; no going up top."

Carter and LeBeau looked at him in surprise: it was normal procedure to let airmen staying several days go up one by one and get some fresh air in the compound, since they could blend in easily enough with the rest of the prisoner population. But Kinch and Newkirk nodded slightly when the colonel's eyes swept over the four of them in a firm look that was easily enough understood, so none of them protested the unusual order.

"You fellas are probably all dead tired at the moment," Hogan continued, looking back at their guests. "LeBeau, can you get them some chow, and Carter, help him bring it down. Newkirk will get some blankets organized and show you where you can sleep," he added.

"_Oui, colonel_. We'll be back . . . in a jiffy," LeBeau responded, looking at Carter with raised eyebrows, who grinned in affirmation. As they climbed up the ladder, Carter could be heard saying, "See, I told you that 'jiffy' would be a useful word to know. . . ."

As Newkirk disappeared into the alcove that served as sleeping quarters for rescued airmen, Hogan looked around at their guests and inquired, "Are any of you hurt at all? We can get our medic down here if you caught any flak on the way down or landed badly."

All six looked each other over, then shook their heads. "Thanks for the offer, but looks like we don't," Captain Luck answered for all of them.

"Livin' up to the team name again," Watts couldn't resist quipping.

Luck ignored him, simply saying, "But some grub and some sleep does sound like a good idea."

LeBeau and Carter clattered back down the ladder just then, carefully handing off a couple of covered pots they were balancing between them. LeBeau then called softly up the ladder, "Ready, Greenberg!" and a loaf of bread wrapped in a handkerchief dropped into his arms followed by a similarly wrapped cheese. Carter had set the pots down on a wood box that served as a rough side table and was pulling out some tin bowls from inside another; LeBeau joined him and soon had bowls of soup with a small ration of bread and cheese sliced for each of the visitors.

Their guests appreciatively dug into the provisions as LeBeau poured cups of ersatz coffee for them and Carter handed them around.

Toft raised his cup to his lips and nearly choked at the first sip. "I thought that was coffee!"

"Ersatz coffee—mostly chicory root this time, I think." LeBeau shrugged. "Be grateful: it's hot and you don't have to worry about it keeping you up. Besides, last month what we got was mostly beet root; the chicory is much better."

Toft looked dubious, an expression echoed by Watts, but after getting a stern glance from Captain Luck, they both swallowed the hot liquid down, trying not to grimace. The others followed suit, though clearly the soup, bread, and cheese went down more easily.

As they were finishing up their food, Newkirk came back from the tunnel alcove usually used as a below-ground barracks when they were processing escapees and air crews. "This way, gents! I've got your beds all set for you 'ere at our four-star 'otel," he said cheerily. "I've turned your covers back but I'm afraid we're out of chocolates to put on your pillows. Also, we're out of pillows. I can't say as you'll 'ave much view, but you don't 'ave to worry about the morning sun waking you."

"Everybody should turn in," Hogan advised as LeBeau and Carter gathered up the remains of the meal. "We'll have quite a lot to do in the morning to start getting all of you ready to go." He looked over at his son and his voice softened. "We'll find some time to get caught up tomorrow, Bobby."

Lieutenant Hogan met his eyes briefly, then glanced away, apparently embarrassed. "Sure, if you have the time," he said with a slight shrug.

The colonel's face tightened slightly, but he answered gently, "There'll be time." He gestured for Newkirk to go ahead and get the visitors settled, then said to Captain Luck, "Let us know if there's anything you and your men need. We'll be back down in the morning with breakfast for you and we'll get started on getting you all ready to ship out."

The captain nodded his understanding and followed his men and Newkirk into the alcove.

Hogan turned to Kinch. "Ready to close up for the night?"

"Sure, Colonel." Kinch began going through the shutting down routine as LeBeau and Carter started up the ladder, carrying the used pots and bowls for cleaning. Once they were up, Newkirk came out from the alcove, and Hogan signaled him to head upstairs as well. The colonel climbed the ladder after him, then Kinch blew out the oil lamps, leaving just the electric lamp near the radio table lit so the men below weren't left in total darkness, and followed the others up the ladder.

Once up top, LeBeau and Carter put the dishes in the sink of the darkened barracks, trying not to clink them together too much. Kinch followed the colonel across the room, hesitating by his own bunk until Hogan waved a silent goodnight and headed into his quarters, closing the door behind him. Newkirk paused by his bunk, Carter nearly bumping into him. Newkirk glanced over at LeBeau, then Kinch, raising his eyebrows, barely visible in the dim light from the open stove door. Kinch shook his head and pointed at their bunks. Whatever conversation they might have about the night's revelation was going to have to wait. LeBeau and Newkirk traded glances again, then Newkirk pulled off his jacket and turtleneck and drew his nightshirt out from under his blanket, shrugging it on while the others stripped down to their long underwear. Finally, they all climbed wearily into their bunks.

But only Kinch, lying on his bunk just outside the colonel's door, could hear the pacing on the other side. It wasn't an unusual sound: Kinch was well accustomed to hearing Colonel Hogan wearing out shoe leather when working out a plan for a mission. But tonight the cadence of his footsteps sounded different—aimless, not driven.

ooOoo


	3. Chapter 3: The Past

Morning seemed to come extra early to the fatigued men of Barracks 2, but the early risers soon had up those who would have liked to linger a little longer in their bunks. As Kinch stretched himself to work out the kink in his left shoulder that his thin mattress always seemed to leave, Colonel Hogan abruptly appeared out of his quarters, notably earlier than usual. Kinch, looking closely at him, observed that he was already shaved and that the small lines around his eyes seemed deeper than usual. He nudged LeBeau, who had just finished pulling on his trousers.

The Frenchman took one look at Hogan and bent to his footlocker, pulling out his precious stash of real coffee. He couldn't afford to use enough to make a full pot, but he added double his usual measure of the real beans to the ersatz. "Should we try to get breakfast to the crew below before roll call?" he asked the colonel as the water finished boiling in the coffee pot on the stove where Kinch had stoked the fire.

Hogan shook his head. "Let 'em sleep till after we're done with breakfast. There's no reason to wake them early when they'll just be sitting around down there waiting for us."

"Well, why don't we let—" Carter started, only to yelp "OW!" as Newkirk trod on his foot.

"Sorry, mate," Newkirk patted his shoulder in a friendly fashion, but accompanied it with a sharp glare and slight shake of his head. Carter, never one to pick up on subtle gestures, at least got this one and shut up, sitting down on his bunk to nurse his sore toes, muttering, "Geez, you didn't hafta step on me."

"Rrroolll caaalll! Everybody out, out, out! _Raus_! _Raus_!" Schultz entered the barracks shortly after the coffee had been poured and drunk, bawling out his customary phrase and provoking the usual storm of grumbling as the men grabbed jackets and coats before falling out into the usual loose formation in the compound, Carter still hobbling slightly.

Roll call lasted only its usual chilly eternity, Klink speechifying on the glories of the Third Reich and delaying breakfast still further as the prisoners surreptitiously stamped their feet and buried their hands in their pockets or up under their armpits to try to stay warm in the bitingly chilly March morning air. For once Hogan said nothing in response to any of Klink's ridiculous claims, too distracted by the events of the night before, Kinch judged.

Finally Klink wrapped up. But he followed up the usual "Diisss-misssed!" by calling out, "Colonel Hogan! I would like a word with you."

Hogan sighed and ambled unenthusiastically over to where the Kommandant waited. The rest of the men from Barracks Two trudged off to the mess hall for early breakfast rotation, but his core team lagged behind, leaning on the front wall of the hut, waiting for the colonel.

"Yes, Kommandant?" Hogan asked irritably.

Klink rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. "I had a very good dinner in town last night," he started. "With that young lady I met at the concert last week. _Fräulein_ Ulla," he added, drawing out the first and last vowels of her name dreamily.

Hogan regarded him with impatience; he had never been less interested in Klink's love life than he was at the moment. "That's great, Kommandant," he answered, dripping sarcasm with each syllable. "So why are you telling me about this right now?"

Klink's hand rubbing slowed, and his expression became calculating. From long experience, Hogan's antennae automatically pricked up. Klink wanted something from him, and Hogan knew he'd needed to bargain for it with his men and upcoming missions in mind.

"_Fräulein_ Ulla is a gymnast, Hogan. Very . . . ah, physically fit. She believes quite strongly in the benefits of a strong body."

"So she's not interested in you then?" Hogan couldn't help himself saying.

Klink drew himself up in irritation. "I am quite fit, Colonel Hogan, as required by regulations!"

"Uh huh," Hogan drawled. "Well, for a man your age, I guess they lower the bar considerably."

"Insolence!" Klink sputtered, his satisfied hand rubbing morphing into shaking his right fist at his senior POW officer.

"Was there some point to all this, Kommandant?" Hogan asked, tiring of the little game.

Klink's countenance shifted back into something approximating cunning. "As I was saying before you interrupted," he paused and looked challengingly at Hogan, who merely crossed his arms and waited, silently willing Klink to finish up, "_Fräulein_ Ulla is a gymnast. Inspired by the Strength through Joy program, she has started a gymnastics team for the young ladies of Hammelburg, to promote physical fitness and improve morale."

"And what does this fascinating bit of gossip have to do with me?" Hogan asked. "If they're looking for an audience, I'm sure the all the boys here would be delighted to go into town to watch a show."

"_Fräulein_ Ulla particularly believes in gymnastics set to music," Klink continued, ignoring Hogan's mocking offer. "A team of fit young women who work in unison to produce beauty. It is a fine symbol of our German culture to share with our local population and improve morale."

"Yeah, right. The Rockettes do the same thing. And so where do I fit in to all this? If you want me to coach, I'm willing." Hogan couldn't help grinning a bit at the prospect.

"_Fräulein_ Ulla coaches the team herself," Klink snapped, then recovered himself. "They have been practicing to accordion music, provided by one of our local musicians. Unfortunately, he was drafted for the Russian front last week."

"Yeah, pretty unfortunate for him," Hogan remarked sardonically. "Soooo, again, what does this have to do with me? I don't play accordion."

"But perhaps one of the other prisoners does?" Klink inquired eagerly.

The light bulb clicked on for Hogan. Keep your mind on the job! You should've seen that coming_, _he scolded himself inwardly.

"So you want me to find a POW accordion player to perform for Nazi propaganda and morale purposes," he summed up Klink's request. "I don't think so, Kommandant."

Klink's lips thinned in frustration, which meant they nearly disappeared from view altogether. "I am willing to pay him, Hogan."

"Because you think this will help you charm yourself into _Fräulein_ Ulla's good graces," Hogan remarked skeptically.

"Hogan, you are a man, you understand these things," Klink implored.

"I _used_ to understand them," Hogan answered with a certain grimness underlying his facetious tone. "It's been a while, Kommandant. Maybe I've forgotten."

Klink snorted, "I don't think so, given how you look at Fraulein Hilda." Hogan shrugged, unwilling to admit to anything. Gaining no ground with that, Klink went back to entreaty, promising, "I will make it worth your while, as well as pay the man you find."

Well, having someone who could go into town and back on a regular basis was too useful an opportunity to pass up, Hogan thought. "Okay, Kommandant, I'll look into it—on the condition of an extra hour of electricity a night for the next month for the camp."

"An hour!" Klink shook his head. "An extra fifteen minutes for a week."

Hogan rolled his eyes. "Okay, an extra half hour for two weeks—and that's just for looking. _If_ I find anyone, we'll negotiate the price for his services then. Take it or leave it, Kommandant."

"Hmph," Klink snorted in displeasure. After a moment he yielded. "Very well. But don't drag your feet on this, Hogan. I expect an answer back today if you want any extra light."

Hogan nodded and sketched a salute at him before turning away toward the mess hall. By unspoken common consent, Kinch, Newkirk, LeBeau, and Carter fell into step with him, Carter having almost completely lost his earlier limp.

The chow line had gone down during Klink's negotiations, and they were able to get their black bread, margarine, and ersatz coffee rations fairly quickly. They took seats in a corner at the end of one of the common tables near the back of the hall, Hogan at the head of the table with his back to the wall, Kinch and Carter on the side at his right, Newkirk and LeBeau on his left. Hogan worked his way silently through his bread while the others kept conversation going by betting on the baseball teams the various barracks were recruiting with the hope of spring weather to come. Newkirk's contributions to this baseball discussion—as all others—mostly lauded the superiority of cricket to baseball, drawing the usual fire from the Americans on the impossibility of understanding the English national sport. Newkirk's defense was spirited, and breakfast whiled away during the debate.

Finished with his bread rations, Hogan glanced around the room; finding it free of guards within earshot he abruptly began talking when the ball game discussion hit a lull. He carefully kept his voice pitched low enough that only the two men on either side of him could hear.

"Okay, you guys have all been really polite, but I know you're dying to ask. So here's the story. But do me a favor and don't interrupt while I tell it. As you've probably guessed, a lot of it's not very pretty." His men all nodded seriously. Hogan paused, then plunged on.

"So my senior year of high school I was in love with a beautiful girl. Katie Mahoney." He grinned very slightly, staring off in the distance. "And I wanted her like only an eighteen-year-old boy can want a girl—you know?"

"_Mais oui_, of course," LeBeau smiled.

"Oh yeah," Kinch sighed with his own small grin. Newkirk stroked his chin, eyes softer than usual. Even Carter blushed and nodded.

"The only thing our parents agreed on was that us seeing each other so seriously was a bad idea. But we were determined to get married, despite her parents saying _no_ and mine saying _wait_. Two days after graduation we took a train to New York; we came back married three days later."

"You _eloped?_" Carter's eyes widened till they were almost perfectly round.

"Yeah. My parents put the best face on it and gave us a party as a reception when we got back, but Katie's folks were furious and wouldn't come, wouldn't speak to her."

He sighed. "That was really hard on her, and I felt bad that I'd come between them that way, though not so much that I ever regretted marrying her. I started college in the fall and Katie worked as a secretary, but by late in the first term we knew she was expecting. That news finally brought her parents around—they didn't want to miss out on their grandchild. And she got to see more of her brothers and sisters after that too.

"So I was going to quit college and get a job. That made _my_ parents unhappy, but I felt I had to support Katie and the baby. It was all going okay, and late in May Bobby was born. Katie wanted to name him Robert after me and Theodore after her dad, kind of as an olive branch. That was fine with me—whatever she wanted."

Hogan stopped and put his hand over his mouth, staring off down the table, but apparently not seeing anything. The other four shifted and traded glances uneasily.

After swallowing visibly, twice, Hogan continued, "Everything seemed okay, but a couple days later Katie got really sick." He closed his eyes, then added, his voice cracking just slightly, "And then—she died. The docs had a fancy name for it, but my mom just called it childbed fever."

He drew a deep breath and pushed on. "So there I was at nineteen, with a newborn baby and no wife. And I . . . didn't handle it very well. Neither did Katie's parents—they blamed me for Katie dying, and I didn't have much to answer that with. They insisted that they take Bobby, said that I didn't know what to do with a baby, that I owed them for taking Katie from them, and they could give him a good home with their younger kids. They seemed right at the time.

"So I let them have him. I still don't know if it was the right thing to do or the biggest mistake of my life." Hogan looked down at his empty plate.

Carter fidgeted, clearly wanting to say something but afraid to, remembering his earlier promise not to interrupt. The movement attracted Hogan's attention. "Yeah, Carter? What is it?" he asked patiently.

"Well, from what you and he said last night it sounds like you saw him some as he was growing up. Is that right, sir?"

Hogan nodded. "I switched schools; my parents helped me get into the Military Academy for that summer because they thought it would help me to get out of there, start over fresh with something completely different. And it did. I pretty much pretended it had all never happened, tried to have a regular academy life. That sort of worked, until the next summer when I went home to visit my folks. My mom pushed at me to do it, so I went over to Katie's parents' house. And there on the front porch, right where I used to court Katie, Bobby was toddling around following his youngest uncle, Roy, who was less than two years older than he was." Hogan worked his jaw right and left. "And that just kinda kicked me in the gut, realizing all I'd missed that year. There was no taking him back from the Mahoneys then, but I made sure I saw him on every school break or leave I had after that, and I insisted he keep my name. I might not get to raise him, but I was damned if he'd grow up not knowing who I was.

"The Mahoneys weren't real happy about that, though. As he got older we fought about me seeing him when I was back on leave. They thought it was disruptive, wanted him to see himself as one of theirs, not as mine. But I made sure he got a present from me each birthday and Christmas, wrote him regularly, and sent the Mahoneys money to provide for him so they couldn't accuse me of abandoning him. As he got a little older, I started taking him camping and fishing each summer when I could get back for visits. Then in '33 when Bobby was nine, they moved from Bridgeport up to Maine. That made it even harder to get up to see him, but I still managed it most summers. One time, when he was twelve, I got up there and found they'd sent him away to camp without telling me, to keep me from visiting him. They wouldn't even tell me where he was, at first, till I threatened to sue for full custody.

"When I went to see him in the summer of '39, I took my motorcycle up there. I didn't tell them I was coming that year, just roared up on it." Hogan grinned a little at the memory. "He was impressed, all right. The Mahoneys weren't happy, but I took him for a long ride along the coast of New England, down to my folks' house in Connecticut and back, spent a full week with him."

He looked down, toying with his tin plate for a moment. "Next time I saw him, I flew up there for an overnight visit early in the summer of 1940, just before shipping out to England. He was mad, didn't want me to go. Said it wasn't our fight, Americans didn't belong in a war in Europe. Sounded just like his grandfather Mahoney."

Hogan sighed. "We . . . well, we didn't leave the argument in a good place—I had to leave before I could convince him I really had to go. He just wouldn't see it. And that was the last I saw him, or even heard from him directly. He hasn't written me since, though I've heard a bit through my parents. I knew he'd joined up, but not what branch of the service. Not till last night." He fell silent, staring down at his empty tin coffee cup as he twirled it around between his hands.

His men traded looks, uneasy and uncomfortable, unsure what to say.

Kinch rubbed his hand over his mouth, then finally said, "That's a lot of years to miss."

Hogan nodded in agreement. "Don't I know it."

ooOoo

_Author's Notes: _

_1) Here's part of the timeline I worked out early on as I drafted the story, if you're interested in how the dates work:_

1905 Robert Edward Hogan and Kate Mahoney born.

1923 Rob and Katie turn eighteen in the spring, graduate from high school, and marry.

1924 Late May: Robert Theodore Hogan born, Katie dies. July: Rob leaves for United States Military Academy.

1925 Summer: Rob sees one-year-old Bobby.

1928 Rob joins the Army full time.

1933 Mahoneys move to Augusta, Maine.

1936 Summer: Rob tries to visit twelve-year-old Bobby, who is at camp.

1939 Summer: Rob takes fifteen-year-old Bobby on motorcycle trip. Sept. 1: Nazis invade Poland, World War II starts.

1940 May: Germans invade Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, France. They all (plus Norway) surrender in May or early June. May 27-June 4: Dunkirk evacuation of British and French troops from France. Early June: Major Robert Hogan visits Bobby, who has just turned sixteen, before leaving for England.

_2) I found a picture on Wikipedia of a gymnastics team from 1930s Germany, part of the Nazi Party's Strength through Joy program. Music was being provided by an accordion player. Seemed perfect for my purposes. . . . _

_3) Childbed fever, or puerperal fever as the medical establishment calls it, results from an infection contracted in childbirth or miscarriage. The infection often quickly leads to septicemia (blood poisoning), and frequently kills the woman at this stage. This was especially true before antibiotics were developed in the 1940s, of course. Though the disease is far rarer today, three women still die from it for every 100,000 births in first world nations, with much worse rates in developing nations. It was particularly bad in the nineteenth century, when hospitals started being used for births but before doctors learned to wash their hands between patients. Famous women who died of childbed fever: Henry VIII's mother, his third wife, and his widow; the great early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (author of "The Vindication of the Rights of Women") and her daughter Mary Shelley (author of the original novel, __Frankenstein__). Madeleine L'Engle, the author of the beloved American children's classic __A Wrinkle in Time__, very nearly died of it also in 1947, but was saved by the new antibiotics._


	4. Chapter 4: Officer to Officer

Once back in the barracks, LeBeau began gathering food for their guests' breakfast, starting with the big loaf of black bread Newkirk had surreptitiously been slipped by one of the chow line servers and had smuggled back under his long coat. LeBeau set Carter to carving it into slices while he looked to see what he could supplement it with. Extra supplies were scarce at the moment.

Hogan waved Kinch into his office, then slid onto the stool in front of his desk while Kinch leaned casually against the bunk bed.

"I want contact between this crew and the other men in camp kept to a minimum; the fewer that know about who's here this time, the better. Core team only."

Kinch nodded. "He does look unmistakably like you, Colonel."

"Yeah. While he was growing up, I kept looking for Katie in him, but mostly I just saw me. The Mahoneys sure would've liked him to look like them, but he's a Hogan through and through." Hogan shook his head slightly, then changed the subject. "The next message to London, let them know we've got Luck's crew here, so they'll head off notifying their families, then tell them we need a courier plane. Tell them we have a package whose price is too high for the usual channels."

Kinch raised his eyebrows. "A courier plane? They won't all fit. We'll get a couple in if we're lucky, three at the most.

Hogan nodded. "The others will go by the usual route."

"They seem pretty tight with each other. Won't like splitting up that way," Kinch added dubiously.

Hogan shrugged. "They don't have to like it. They just have to do it. It's too dangerous to have Bobby go the usual route. If he got captured, we could have the Gestapo on our doorstep in just a couple of hours, once his picture and his name got into the system, if they were seen by the wrong people."

"Right." Kinch paused, letting the plan settle in. "LeBeau should have breakfast sorted out. You going down below now?"

Hogan nodded, and the two went out into the main room. LeBeau and Carter were already below, with Newkirk on his way down. Hogan and Kinch followed them. They found Captain Luck and his crew all up, eyes lighting up at the sight of food, even if it was only black bread, some jam, and more ersatz coffee.

"How'd you fellas sleep?" Hogan inquired generally, though his eyes came to rest on his son.

"Okay," said Captain Luck answered for everyone, glancing around.

"We hear you run the best hotel in town—though I don't think much of your competition, sir," Watts wisecracked.

"Trust me, you don't want to try the other one," Newkirk chuckled, and got an assortment of muffled agreements as the crew tried to chew their way through the bread.

"Geez, this is tough," Toft complained. "What's in it, sawdust?"

"Possibly. The Kommandant's been trying to stretch the food budget recently." LeBeau's matter-of-fact assent clearly surprised them, and after trading uneasy glances, they all settled down to chewing.

Lieutenant Hogan kept his gaze down on his bread, Kinch noted: he hadn't met his father's eyes or said a word since they'd come down. That looked like trouble to him. But the Colonel wasn't pushing; he was playing it cool. Right approach or wrong one with that kid? Kinch wondered as he fiddled with the radio headset. The sound quality wasn't right, it seemed to be going dead off and on. A new radio problem was certainly trouble they didn't need at the moment.

Once everyone had finished eating, Hogan's men began clean up and arranging for the visiting crew to wash up and shave. Hogan beckoned Captain Luck down one of the side tunnels. "I'd like a word with you, Captain."

He led him a fair way down the tunnel, till he was sure they were out of earshot of the rest of the men.

Luck looked at him, curious but wary. "Yes, sir?"

"We're calling London for a courier plane," Hogan explained abruptly. "It'll take two, maybe three of your men back to London, depending on what plane they send. Lieutenant Hogan will be one of them; I need you to choose who the other two might be, and prioritize them. The rest of you will follow the usual escape route to the coast and be picked up by submarine there."

Luck frowned, and folded his arms across his chest. "I trust all of my men, Colonel. They can all handle the usual route. I don't want to split up my team."

Hogan frowned. "I trust all of mine too, Captain, but individual men have different strengths. There are some situations I'd send Newkirk into over Carter, and vice versa. It's not a matter of trust; it's choosing the man with the best talents for the assignment. We have a remarkable success rate on getting men to the coast, but it's no cakewalk. You'll have guides, and you'll be hidden for a lot of the trip, but sometimes you'll be out in the open, and more vulnerable to capture. So weigh their intelligence, their ability to think on their feet, and their patience. The ones who will do best overland will be street smart but patient, not too excitable or impulsive. If you have someone who speaks any German on your crew, he ought to go overland."

Luck shifted his jaw to the left momentarily, his eyes on Hogan. "Yes, I have one who knows some German, took it in high school. That'd be—well, to you, Colonel, I guess I should say Lieutenant Hogan."

Hogan couldn't help it; he rolled his eyes heavenward in exasperation, before fixing them back on the recalcitrant crew commander. "Captain Luck," he said, his tone impatient, "I'm asking for your professional evaluation of your men, officer to officer. Which three will cope best with the escape route? Which one will go on the plane with Lieutenant Hogan if there's space? And who is the reserve, if the plane's big enough?"

Luck scowled at him, but Hogan held his gaze firmly. "Captain? I don't have all day."

Luck finally dropped his eyes. "Watts. He can't resist smarting off to anyone, as you've already seen, and I suppose that could cause trouble. And if there's space, Toft. He's a bit more high-strung than Burgin, who's smart and calm, though pretty shy. Smoot and I will go overland with Burgin, and Toft if necessary, since that's more dangerous, sir." He looked back up at Hogan, as if expecting a challenge to his judgment.

Hogan shook his head, relieved that Luck's two picks were also the smallest of the team; that might help if they were crunched for space in a small plane. "The plane is more dangerous in some ways, since it could be shot down. But that's how B—I mean, Lieutenant Hogan's got to go. Till we have the okay from London, though, keep this between us, captain. I'll start Kinch drilling all of you on language; the others will work on civilian clothes and papers for you."

"What's the timeline on all this, sir?" Luck asked, glowering.

"We'll have to see what London says about the courier plane, and what the weather brings. I'd guess a day or two on that, if we're lucky, and another couple to get the rest of you ready to go."

Luck frowned. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

Hogan raised his brows and folded his arms across his chest. "I was under the impression that you were already doing so, Captain."

Luck put his hands on his waist, elbows out. "Colonel, Lieutenant Hogan is going to figure that you're ordering that plane for him, even if there's one or two others on it. He's not going to go for being the reason we split up."

Hogan answered him coolly, "Then, Captain, I'll be depending on you as his commanding officer to make it clear that this is a benefit for your crew as a whole. Quite frankly, we couldn't send all six of you through usual channels as a single group anyway; it'll have to be in pairs. Maybe a trio, but that's more noticeable, so more risky."

"Why are you so set on the plane, if it's more dangerous, as you say? Looks like if you're trying to keep your boy out of harm's way, you'd send him the 'safer' route with the rest of us? . . . Sir," he added, belatedly.

Hogan glared at him. "This isn't preferential treatment, Captain. If Lieutenant Hogan gets caught on the overland route, it'd put a whole lot of people, most of them civilians, in danger—my whole underground network, which is going to be helping the rest of you escape. If he was caught, it wouldn't take much for him to be identified as my son by the Nazis, and he'd be a gold mine for the Gestapo if they saw the connection. They're already suspicious enough of this area in general and me in particular. The combination of his face and his name make him dangerous, Captain."

Luck gave him a long assessing look, then said, his tone level and deliberate, "Then I guess you should have let him carry the name of the family that raised him. Sir."

Hogan jerked slightly, like he'd been punched, then nodded grimly. "Yeah. Guess I should have," he snarled, then turned on his heel to stalk back down the tunnel.


	5. Chapter 5: Skirmishes

Kinch had been fussing for a while with the radio's headset, which still wasn't working properly for some as yet unidentified reason, when Colonel Hogan and Captain Luck both re-entered the main room. Whatever conversation they'd had didn't seem to have gone well, given the stormy expressions on both their faces.

Their two crews immediately picked up on the tension between their COs. The easy banter among Newkirk, LeBeau, and Carter stilled. Burgin, who was still shaving over the basin of water and small mirror they'd provided, paused to exchange an uneasy silent glance first with Toft, then with Watts, whose lips parted slightly but who mercifully kept his mouth shut. The younger Hogan, seated on a box, pulled his head back slightly, eyes narrowed, a small gesture that was eerily familiar to Kinch, who had glanced over at him just in time to see it. Lieutenant Smoot, sitting on the bunk near the radio, edged over to make room for Captain Luck, who crossed the chamber and plunked down hard next to him, then sat staring off toward the emergency tunnel.

Ignoring the captain, Hogan came over to Kinch. "You get the message off?"

"Yes, sir, and they acknowledged receipt. No answer yet, Colonel."

Hogan gave one curt nod, then turned to face the other men, lifting his head, crossing his arms in front of him, and taking a breath to calm himself. His voice was even when he spoke.

"Okay, we need to start preparing all of you to move out. After you finish washing up, LeBeau and Carter will interview each of you to see what kind of cover will work best for you and get our forgery team to draw up false papers that will match it. Newkirk will get your measurements, so we can get civilian suits made for you to wear. Once we have backstories worked out for you and the right clothes, Carter will get photos of you for the IDs and papers we'll be making. While we're working on all that, Kinch will run language instruction for you; we can't get you anything like fluent, of course, but we can get you drilled on questions you're most likely to run into and some short common answers to them. Any questions?" He scrutinized Luck as he asked.

The captain shook his head, and his crew followed suit.

Their compliance won a small smile from Hogan. "All right, everybody, get moving."

Leaving Carter, Newkirk, and LeBeau to divide the guests up for their various tasks, Hogan turned back to Kinch and placed a hand on his shoulder. Bending slightly and pitching his voice low, he added under the cover of the other talk, "Tell them to prioritize clothes and papers for Luck, Smoot, and Burgin, then Toft, then Watts. With any luck we'll be sending the last two back with . . . well, on the plane, and won't need papers or clothes for them. But keep that information just to our team for the moment."

Kinch nodded slightly. "I'll spread the word as I get a chance."

Hogan squeezed his shoulder lightly in appreciation, then dropped his hand. As everyone went about their business, the colonel drifted over to his son, who had been watching him guardedly from his seat on the box by the wall. "We've got some time now," Hogan said quietly. "How about we do some catching up?"

The lieutenant looked over at his crew mates. "Shouldn't I be getting outfitted too?"

"There's six of you to work on, and three of them still need to get cleaned up like you already have. It's going to take a while. No reason you can't go later, so you and I can use the time now."

The lieutenant swallowed. "Okay. I guess."

Pretending not to notice the apparent lack of enthusiasm, Hogan led him back to the sleeping alcove. It didn't offer much privacy, but at least they were out of everyone else's direct line of sight and a little way down the tunnel. The buzz of conversation from all the others would be loud enough that they wouldn't be directly listened to. He gestured at the rough bunks, and they both sat down on the edge of one.

"It's good to see you, Bobby," Hogan started off. "I never dreamed. . . ."

"I don't go by Bobby anymore," the younger Hogan interrupted.

"Not a man's name?" Hogan asked with a small smile.

"Well, yeah, that—plus it's yours."

Hogan paused. "So, Bob now? Not Rob, like me?"

"Neither," the young man announced defiantly. "When I joined up I switched to using my middle name and shortened it to Ted. Smooty and Watts started ribbing me that I was too young to be Ted and tried calling me Teddy, then Teddy Bear. I didn't like that; they're always giving me a hard time about my age because all of them are so much older than me. But Captain Luck told them to knock it off, and they all mostly call me Ted now."

"I see." Hogan hesitated, then added reluctantly, "Well, I'll try to stick to Ted. But you'll have to be patient with me—I've thought of you as Bobby for nineteen years now."

"Really? I didn't think you'd thought enough about me to make switching hard."

Hogan sighed heavily. "Look, I know you're mad at me—you've been angry since you turned sixteen, and probably younger. And I won't say you don't have some reason. But you're not being fair, son. I've written you over and over, and never heard back from you either."

"You're lying." The younger man's voice shook. "I haven't heard a word from you since you left for England!"

The color drained from Hogan's face, then his eyes hardened. "Bobby, I swear I've written—maybe not as often as I should, but I've sent several letters every year since I came over. First from London, then from here."

"It's _Ted_. And why haven't I gotten any of these supposed letters?"

"At the moment, I would guess your grandparents haven't passed them on to you," Hogan ground out, his hands fisted on his knees.

"Pops and Mama wouldn't do that," Ted averred, shaking his head. "They know how much it'd mean to me."

"That's probably exactly why they haven't passed them on!" Hogan snapped. "If you haven't gotten a single letter from me in nearly four years, then that's what had to have happened, because I sent them," he insisted, lowering his voice. "And it certainly explains why I've never heard from you."

"I figured you weren't interested in hearing from me, if you wouldn't write," his son muttered.

Hogan pulled off his cap, ran his hand through his hair. "Of course I was. And I _did_ write." He put his cap back on. "Look, we can't resolve or fix that, so let's set it aside for now. There's lots that can't get put into letters anyway." He leaned forward. "Like I said earlier, I'd like to catch up. We have a chance right now."

Ted wasn't mollified. "What do you care? I haven't seen you since summer 1940, and hardly at all before that anyway. That's nearly four years ago—I'd just turned 16 the week before. You weren't there when I played pitcher on the baseball team or to meet any of my girlfriends or when I graduated from high school or when I—when I . . . did _anything_!"

"No, I wasn't. I know that, and I'm sorry about it, if that makes any difference to you. But I couldn't help it. C'mon, Bobby, you know I couldn't be: I was assigned over to London in 1940."

"You _volunteered_. You told me that last time you came to see me. You didn't have to go, but of course you couldn't wait to get as far away as possible—you couldn't even wait for the U.S. to get into the war! You just up and went. It wasn't even our fight yet!"

"It's not that simple!" Hogan countered angrily. "Hitler had destroyed every democracy in Europe but Britain by June that year, and it wasn't at all clear that Britain would last once Germany started hammering them. The British needed our help, even if it was as unofficial as familiarizing them with the planes they were buying from us, observing, and making tactical recommendations. I was one of the most experienced officers in the Air Corps at the time for that job. I had to go. And believe me, after two years here in Germany, in Nazi hands, I've seen first-hand why that maniac in Berlin has to be stopped!"

"Well, you might not have gotten shot down and caught if you hadn't had to be the first in the air!"

"That's not how it happened, Bobby—" Hogan started.

"It's _Ted_ now. Not _Bobby!_" his son interrupted heatedly. "I told you that earlier. R. Theodore Hogan. I'm not using _your_ first name anymore! I'd rather use Pops'! It's bad enough I have your last name! I oughta be a Mahoney! And besides, it wasn't just the war—you weren't ever around before that either!"

"C'mon, Bob– I mean, _Ted_, you know it was difficult. I was stationed mostly out in California, and Ohio, and down in Virginia, and couldn't get home much when you were young. Not to mention that your grandparents didn't want me around even when I could. I spent every leave I could with you." Hogan sighed and leaned back against the tunnel wall. "Maybe it doesn't seem like much to you, but I did the best I could," he added resignedly.

"You could have done something else. Some other job." Ted's voice was low and resentful, his eyes on his father.

"Some other job?" Hogan's eyebrows shot up in disbelief, and he sat forward again. "Kid, did you somehow miss the Depression? I was damn lucky to _have_ a career that gave me a job—and one that let me visit you occasionally, I might add. There were plenty of other boys your age who saw their fathers a lot less than you saw me!" Hogan could hear the heat in his voice, and tried to clamp down on it, but somehow couldn't stop himself from adding, "I can understand you thinking that when you were eight or ten, but a nineteen-year-old Army lieutenant ought to know better." Shouldn't have said that, he thought to himself regretfully the moment it was out of his mouth.

Ted jerked like he'd been slapped. "Yeah. Guess I should. Guess I shouldn't have ever thought when I was lying in bed at night that you'd want me too, might take me with you when you visited. But no, you were too busy with your _career_, not to mention making time with whatever floozies you could pick up."

"I never saw any women when I was with you! The time I had to spend with you, I kept for you, and just you," Hogan protested indignantly.

"Yeah, except for picking up girls at the local bar every night. Pops' friend Mr. Crider saw you down at the Fantail, and not just once, either, so don't try to deny it."

Hogan's eyes hardened. "I'm not denying it. Yeah, I went to the bar in the evenings—because your grandparents chased me out of the house the moment you were in bed. You know damn well they wouldn't even put me up at their house when I came to visit you, wouldn't even let me sleep on the couch. And after listening to your grandfather Mahoney all evening, yeah, I had some drinks—needed them and enjoyed them. And yeah, I chatted up pretty ladies at the bar while I was drinking them. I like women, and I enjoy their company, always have. But that had nothing to do with you, and my time with you." He tried to gentle his voice as he finished.

But Ted was shaking with pent-up emotion. "I heard Mama say that at least with my mother going when she did, she never had to put up with you catting around on her with every woman in sight."

Seething with fury, Hogan stood up abruptly, took two steps away, then turned and came back, raising his leg to put his left foot on the bunk as he leaned over the younger man. "I'd never have cheated on Katie," he hissed. "I won't pretend to be a saint, but I honor my word, and I'd have honored our vows and never looked aside. But your mother's been gone a long, long time, and I'm not going to live like a monk, for all that I've never found a woman that held a candle to her. So yeah, there've been women in my life since then, quite a few of them, in fact, given how much I've moved around. _You_ planning to live the next twenty years of your life without even looking at a girl, Ted?"

Ted looked back up at him, eyes dark with resentment, but he shook his head.

"Then don't expect _me_ to," Hogan snapped and pulled back to standing up, glowering down at him for a moment before turning and dropping back on the bunk beside him. He breathed deeply a couple of times, trying to calm himself.

For a moment all was quiet between them. Ted eventually broke the silence.

"I used to wonder if you'd take me with you if you got married again. I wondered if you'd want me then, if you had a wife. Or if you still wouldn't."

Hogan frowned again. "I wasn't interested in getting married again. And it wasn't a matter of me not wanting you. I was moving so often . . . as your grandparents pointed out, over and over and over, it just didn't seem fair or right to try to do that to a kid, especially when you wouldn't have a mother or any other family to look after you when I was working on base. Much as I hated to, I had to agree with them."

"I'd have managed," Ted muttered.

Hogan crossed his arms and raised his right hand to his forehead, rubbing at the ache he could feel growing there. "Really? I don't know that I would have."

Ted glared at him. "So there it is. You really didn't want me!"

Hogan dropped his hand and glared back. "I _meant_ that I'd have been worried about you, not knowing what you were up to, not having a way to check up on you for hours and sometimes days at a time. You were better off with the stability your grandparents could provide. Besides, you aren't thinking this through. "

"I think you're just making excuses, just like you always have. You had a freer life and were just happier without me. It was just easier for you to be a single guy, not a single dad. Not to mention a lot easier for you to chase women."

"Okay," Hogan admitted in exasperation, "maybe you're right. Maybe I took the easy way out. Maybe I could have taken you. Maybe I _should_ have." He leaned toward Ted again. "Now you tell me, kid, since what _I_ should have done is so simple and obvious to you—would you really rather have grown up moving from base to base with me, with never the same friends from one year to another? A different school every single year—or two a year sometimes, maybe even three? Always the new kid? Being alone in whatever quarters we were assigned for hours on end, making your own meals, putting yourself to bed, getting yourself off to school every morning, whenever I was on duty?"

He put his hand on Ted's knee, but the younger man shook it off impatiently. Hogan drew back, jaw tightening. "How about not having grown up with your uncles? You mean as much or more to Roy as any of his older siblings—last time I saw you, you told me yourself he'd said so. You two aren't even a full two years apart, and you're as close as brothers. I've always seen that between the two of you, whenever I visited. Do you _really_ wish you'd grown up hardly ever seeing him, not really knowing him? And while we're on the subject, _kid_, just what would you do if a family dropped a baby on your doorstep, told you he was yours to raise, right now, all by yourself at nineteen. Would you? Huh?"

Ted stared at the floor, his mouth tightly compressed.

Hogan sighed. "Yeah. It's not so easy to choose in that situation, is it?"

"Well, I wouldn't just give him away as though he didn't matter," Ted muttered.

Hogan shifted further back on the bunk, banging his head against the boards that reinforced the tunnel wall, then shaking it. The two men sat mutely for a moment, with only the filtered voices of the other men down the tunnel filling up the empty air between them. Hogan finally sighed again and broke the silence.

"You always mattered. And okay, I wasn't around back when you were a kid. Maybe I should have been. Maybe I made the wrong choices. I'll say it again if you need to hear it again: I'm sorry. But I'm here right now. We've got a chance, you and I, a chance beyond any hope or expectation I ever had . . . not to make up missing time, I won't pretend that. But to catch up some. And I want to hear everything, every bit you can tell me. Please."

Ted nodded slightly, but still didn't say anything. Hogan scratched his head.

"My parents told me they'd heard you'd joined up, they thought in the Army, but they didn't know what branch of service for sure. You haven't kept much in touch with them either," he couldn't help adding somewhat censoriously.

Ted looked embarrassed and lowered his head.

Hogan shook himself inwardly and veered away from that, before he opened a new can of worms. Another source of conflict was the last thing the two of them needed. "How about you tell me how you wound up in the Army Air Corps," he suggested, making his voice sound as coaxing as he could.

"It's Army Air Force now, not Corps." Hogan thought he heard a small note of amusement in Ted's voice.

"Yeah, I know. But that's another old habit that's hard to break." Hogan grinned a little, then leaned back against the wall and pulled his legs up on the bunk, resting his forearms on his knees and folding his hands together between them. "C'mon, Ted, tell me what got you up in the air."

He got a sidewise look from his son. "Um . . . you remember an officer named Mitchell Hewlett?"

"Mitch? Sure. He was at March Field out in California with me, back in '35. A good guy."

"Yeah. He remembered you too. He saw my name while I was in basic training in Virginia, asked if I was related to you. When I said yes, he suggested I train as a pilot—said if I had your reflexes and stomach I'd make a good one, that he'd recommend me for it." Ted bit his lip, then shrugged. "You'd been shot down earlier that year; I hadn't heard yet if you were alive or not. I remembered how much you'd loved flying, and that one time you took me up in a plane, that summer I was fourteen. I figured, well, there ought to be at least one Hogan up in the sky."

Hogan swallowed hard, staring at his folded hands. "That's . . . well, I didn't expect that."

Ted pulled his legs up onto the bunk too, unconsciously mirroring his father's casual position. "Well, what I really wanted was to fly fighters. I got trained on bombers, though, because the need was greater. And that's fine, because I'm on the best crew and the _Lucky Strike_ is the best plane. . . ." His voice died away, remembering the _Lucky Strike_'s fate the day before.

Hogan reached over to squeeze his son's shoulder gently. "I'm sure she was terrific. And she stayed aloft when hit, gave you and all the others the chance to get out, which kept you all alive. You and she did right by each other."

"Wish we'd been able to keep her going," Ted said softly, his voice rough. "But she'd been hit by so much flak . . . she was tearing apart as we jumped, the metal just screaming. . . ."

"So you've liked flying—you trained as a pilot, not a navigator or bombardier." Hogan deliberately steered the conversation away from the loss and defeat of the previous day. "Why did you want fighters? What do you like about the Marauder? I haven't flown one of those."

Ted looked over at him. "What did you fly—a B-17?"

Hogan nodded. "Yep. She deserved being called a 'Flying Fortress,' too. I never flew anything that matched the power of one of those babies up in the sky." He looked away, his eyes distant.

"Hmm. I always thought you'd like fighters better. More like that Curtiss-Wright Junior you took me up in back in '38." He paused, smiling at the memory. "That was the best day ever. You surprised me so much—when you'd promised me a tour of the airfield, I was so excited. Even more when you let me actually get in the Curtiss-Wright. When you said we were going for a ride, I didn't believe it, even after strapping in, not till you actually signaled your friend to start the propellers. I thought you were having me on."

Hogan smiled also at the shared memory. He bumped his right knee against Ted's left. "You took to it like a natural. I knew when you didn't get sick while I did those loops that you were a born flier."

Ted grinned back at him. "The loops seemed amazing. I know now you were being careful, but at the time it was wild beyond imagination. All the kids I knew envied me when I told them about it later."

Hogan laughed. "That's the fun of small planes. I flew a Hurricane once while I was in Britain, and a Spitfire a few times. I loved that one—I could throw that plane all around the sky." He smiled nostalgically.

"Don't you miss flying?" Ted asked, brow furrowed in puzzlement. "I'd have thought you'd do anything to escape from this prison camp, get back to England and back up in the air where the war is."

"Yeah. I miss it." Hogan's eyes had a faraway look to them, and he fell silent for a moment, remembering his life as a pilot and commander before he was shot down. Then he shook his head slightly. "But the work we're doing here is important, even if—no, especially _because_ it's ground based, behind enemy lines. Flying . . . well, I'll do it again when the war's over. At least I won't have to worry about anyone shooting at my plane then." He glanced sidewise at Ted. "I'm glad that you've learned to fly. It sounds like you enjoy piloting as much as I have."

Ted cleared his throat. "There's . . ." He stopped short, and looking over at him, even in the dim light Hogan could see a faint blush staining his cheeks.

"What is it?"

"I don't know what you'll think. It's just, I've always looked for a way to explain how I felt, that day you took me up in the Curtiss-Wright, how a successful training flight even in the Marauder makes me feel. Not flying in combat," he added in a lower tone. "That's different."

Hogan nodded. "Good flying's hard to describe in words. Especially for people who've never felt it themselves."

"I found the words, once. It's, uh, it's a poem. By a pilot." He glanced over at his father, checking his reaction.

Hogan bumped his knee again lightly. "I'd like to see it sometime. Anyone who can catch that feeling in a way another pilot would recognize . . . that'd be something worth reading."

Ted looked down at his hands again, cheeks flushing an even deeper red. "Actually . . . I have it memorized."

Hogan smiled affectionately. "Then let's hear it."

Ted glanced cautiously out towards the tunnel corridor and the main room, checking the conversational buzz to make sure no one else would hear. Hogan repressed his amusement that Ted was so obviously concerned that his crewmates might overhear him reciting _poetry_. Then Ted started to speak softly, his voice lingering over the lines in a way that suggested he'd run through them many times.

"It's called 'High Flight.'

"Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth  
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;  
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth  
Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things  
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung  
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,  
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung  
My eager craft through footless halls of air.  
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue  
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace  
Where never lark, or even eagle, flew;  
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod  
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,  
—Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."

Hogan covered his mouth with his hand, nodding as he listened. "That's it," he responded, his voice hushed. "That's just _exactly_ it. It's perfect. Who wrote it?"

"John Gillespie Magee. He was an American. He, uh, enlisted with the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940. Flew Spitfires in Britain, actually." Ted was looking studiously back at his hands.

"_Was_ an American?" Hogan queried, after digesting that.

"Yeah. He was killed in a mid-air collision in '41, hit by a training flight." Ted swallowed. "He was nineteen when he died."

Hogan stood up abruptly, took two steps forward, then turned back. Wrapping his arms around his torso, he stared at Ted, who had also risen to his feet, then shook his head. Ted stared back at him, silent, but challenging.

"I'd better check on the others," Hogan said vaguely, looking back toward the main tunnel. "But . . . we'll talk more. There's still . . . a lot more to say."

Ted looked down at the floor, then nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah. Guess I'd better get measured for my suit and everything too, for the trip back to England."

Hogan looked away again. "Yes. You do that." Then he walked out of the alcove, as Ted followed him.

ooOoo

_Author's Notes: _

_1) John Gillespie Magee (9 June 1922 __–_ 11 December 1941) did write the sonnet quoted above; his background is accurate so far as Ted reports it. You can easily find more information on him via the internet, if interested, though I first encountered the poem and Magee's story in L.M. Elliott's realistic, gritty, and wonderful novel, _Under a War-torn Sky__, about a nineteen-year-old American flier whose bomber is shot down over France and who survives with the help of the underground and sympathetic locals. _

_2) My vision of Hogan's early assignment to Britain is much influenced by Syl's brilliant (though unfinished) "A Connecticut Yankee in the RAF," which I recommend if you haven't read it. You can find it here on the ffnet site._


	6. Chapter 6: Battle

Hogan sat in his office at his desk, telling himself he needed to go back down below, talk with Bobby more. No, not Bobby—_Ted_, he reminded himself again. He tried to put aside how much the name change bothered him. Kids do that, he warned himself. A nineteen-year-old kid wants to be his own man, not take his old man's name. But that line of reasoning was somewhat undermined by the kid choosing his _grandfather's_ name, he thought morosely. The grandfather who'd raised him, who'd stood in as his father. . . . Hogan shook his head. You made your choice ages ago, he told himself sternly. You don't have the right to complain about the consequences at this late date.

He tried to turn his attention back to scanning through Kinch's personnel files, looking for an accordion player. Normally, he'd have Kinch do the search, but Kinch was busy down below with the radio, listening for a reply from London and trying to fix the misbehaving headset. Hogan didn't dare delay too long on finding a suitable musician, knowing that Klink would be after him for it soon.

He heard a knock at his door. "Come," he called, swiveling around on the stool.

Kinch entered, a slip of paper in hand. On seeing the colonel irritably sorting through the battered recipe box in which he kept the small slips of papers that served as personnel files, he asked cautiously, "Something you're looking for in particular, Colonel, that I can help you with?"

"Klink wants an accordion player so he can help out a lady he wants to impress," Hogan grumbled. "It might come in handy for us down the line. Do you happen to know offhand of any man in camp who plays accordion?"

"McIntosh in Barracks 13, I think. Or maybe it's concertina?" Kinch's brow wrinkled in concentration.

"All right, I'll check into that. Thanks, it'll save me rooting through here." He gestured toward the box, then glanced at the paper in Kinch's hand. "Did you get the headset working? And did we get an answer from London?"

"The headset is shot; I had to listen to this message over the speakers." Hogan looked askance at that, so Kinch added, "I had the volume down low, and the _Lucky Strike_ crew were talking with each other over in the sleeping alcove. And it's not like it was a voice message, it was just a regular Morse communication." Hogan shrugged acquiescence this time, to Kinch's relief, so he moved on.

"And yes, Colonel, we have an answer from London." He handed Hogan the small slip he'd brought up with him. "Sounds like they agree with you on the seriousness of the situation. They're sending the plane tonight, since the moon is a day after full and the moonrise will be getting too late tomorrow for it to make it here and back again. They said it's a Lysander Mk III. So it can handle three if it has to, but it'll be a mighty tight and uncomfortable trip. Two might be a better choice."

Hogan stared down at the paper. He'd gotten what he wanted. But he hadn't expected it this soon; had thought that London wouldn't be able to organize a plane till at least tomorrow night, had thought that there'd be more time . . . but he'd forgotten about the moon cycles. He shook his head slightly, then said, "There's no point in overloading it. We'll send Sergeant Watts with Lieutenant Hogan. Spread the word that Toft will need to be outfitted to go overland. Then get a shopping list together. If London's going to the trouble of sending a plane here, they can send a big load of supplies in it; no point in wasting the trip over here. Check with Carter, Newkirk, and LeBeau, and the heads of all the support teams, see what we're short on. Put whatever you need for the radio at the top of the list. We'll meet the plane, put the two men on it, and pack the supplies back here."

"Yes, sir, Colonel." Kinch hesitated for a moment, as if planning to say more, but then settled for just leaving the room quietly as Hogan crumpled the paper in his hand.

ooOoo

Returning to the main room, Kinch looked around. The barracks felt close to deserted with only four men in it. Neither Newkirk nor Carter was there, but that was only to be expected; they were supposed to be checking with the forgery team to get the documents for the travelers. He needed to find them soon, so that they wouldn't go ahead with the false papers for Watts. No point in wasting scarce resources. But he needed to get his own shopping list together, too. LeBeau had apparently already delivered Newkirk's measurements to the tailors, since he was kneeling by his footlocker, head poked down as he sorted scanty food supplies. Kinch strolled over to him and leaned his shoulder casually against the bunk.

"Hey, London confirmed the plane for two, so Watts won't need papers or a suit but Toft will. Also, the Colonel wants a shopping list from each team, so the plane can bring supplies for us. Can you go tell Newkirk and Carter, plus the other teams, to check and see what they need? Tell 'em to prioritize requests as essential or useful."

LeBeau looked up, eyes gleaming. "_Oui_, and _I_ will list what food we need."

Kinch nodded; at least this supply drop would make it easier to handle the next several sets of escapees or refugees. "Put real coffee at the top of your list," he advised, thinking of all the late night work they had to manage and how the absence of real coffee had become increasingly burdensome. "But remember, we've got to pack it all back from the plane. Keep it down to what we can carry, huh?"

"You cannot expect me to keep Schultz supplied with strudel made out of air," LeBeau sniffed.

"I thought you said that was what made your pastries so light," Kinch grinned. "So we hardly need—"

"Flour, sugar, spices, lard, _dried_ eggs—pah! What I must make do with these days . . ." LeBeau grumbled under his breath.

"There's a war on," Kinch repeated the oft-quoted line with only a small edge of sarcasm, then added more sympathetically, "Come up with your list as you go find the others. It'll save time." He reached a helpful hand down; LeBeau grabbed it and pulled himself up. Kinch gave him a gentle push towards the door.

"I am going, I am going!" Giving Kinch his usual impish grin, LeBeau put his beret on, wrapped his scarf around his neck, then pulled the door open and slipped through it.

Kinch turned back to his bunk, planning to think through what radio and paper supplies they needed. He had barely sat down when suddenly the trap door to the tunnels sprang open. Puzzled and alarmed, he stood up. The only people in the tunnels at the moment were the _Lucky Strike_ crew, and they shouldn't be—

The thought was interrupted as Lieutenant Hogan climbed out, a look on his face that was disconcertingly reminiscent of his father when the Colonel was truly furious. He halted at the foot of the table, scanning the room.

Saunders, Addison, and Foster, the other three men in the barracks at that moment, all traded startled looks. On the Colonel's orders they hadn't been told about the lieutenant, but it was all too clear to Kinch that they were rapidly adding the obvious one and one together to make two.

As Kinch stepped forward hurriedly, Lieutenant Hogan snapped at him, "Where's my—" Kinch made an abrupt chopping motion, and the lieutenant cut himself off, swallowed, then rephrased what he'd been going to say. "Where is Colonel Hogan?"

"Saunders, watch the door!" Kinch barked, before turning to address the younger Hogan. "You need to go back down in the tunnel, Lieutenant," he replied coldly. "Right now."

"I asked you a question, Sergeant! I expect an answer!"

"We're both under Colonel Hogan's orders, _sir_. And his standing orders are for you to stay down in the tunnel." Feeling his own hackles rising, Kinch raised his voice slightly, stepping further forward to physically block the young officer from getting past the table.

The lieutenant advanced another step as well, confrontation in his eye, but then was distracted by the banging of the office door at the far end of the room. Drawn by the commotion, Colonel Hogan steamed out, the look of wrath on his face identical to that on his son's.

Addison's and Foster's eyes went absolutely round.

"You can't send me back separately—" the lieutenant started, his voice infused with outrage, but he never finished the sentence. Colonel Hogan overrode him.

"Lieutenant, get back down in the tunnel. _Now._"

The colonel did not shout the order, but Kinch could hear the full weight of his rank and authority in the leashed fury of that tone and he caught his breath, drawing himself up nearly to attention. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Addison and Foster doing the same, hardly daring to breathe even though the colonel was paying them no attention at all. How does he _do _that, he wondered, stepping back out of the way as Hogan stalked past him toward the tunnel entrance and his son.

Lieutenant Hogan stood his ground only momentarily, then deflated and climbed back onto the ladder. He glanced upward at his father briefly as he was descending, his cheeks scarlet from humiliation now added to the earlier anger.

Hogan's own face was stony, and no sooner had the lieutenant gotten far enough down than the colonel got on the ladder himself to follow him down below. "Keep an eye on things up here, Kinch," he commanded tersely, with a sharp look over his shoulder.

"Yes, sir," Kinch answered, feeling Addison, Foster, and Saunders staring at him as the bunk slid back down into place, curiosity burning in their eyes. How much to tell them—that was the question.

ooOoo

Hogan landed on the floor of the tunnel and turned to glare at his son, discovering that Ted was flanked in front by Captain Luck on the left, Lieutenant Smoot on the right, and the shorter Sergeant Watts just behind, with Burgin and Toft right by him, all regarding him with equal antagonism. Obviously they'd heard the exchange—it had occurred right over their heads, after all. In the back of his mind, Hogan noted their stance was protective, but at the moment he had other overriding considerations to deal with.

"Captain, I told you to keep our conversation to yourself. Was there some part of that order you couldn't understand?" Hogan took two steps forward as he spoke, his eyes boring into the captain.

Luck didn't back down, setting his hands on his hips. "I did, sir. But we have a radio man too, and he can decode Morse signals as well as your man can when the speaker is on. Sound echoes in an enclosed space like this and he was bored, just passing the time. Watts didn't know about your order. Since the cat was out of the bag, I explained how this would benefit our crew, _as ordered_. Sir."

"Don't blame him," Ted started, but Hogan cut him off ruthlessly.

"I didn't give you permission to speak, Lieutenant!"

Ted shut up, though his look remained mutinous.

"Lieutenant Hogan, Sergeant Watts: you will be ready to leave here tonight at twenty-three hundred to meet a courier plane. My men and I will guide you to it, you'll help unload the supplies on it, and the pilot will take you back to England. The rest of you—Luck, Smoot, Burgin, and Toft—will prepare yourselves to leave via our usual escape route in two more days. This plan will get you _all_ back to England in the greatest possible safety. Is that clear?"

Luck nodded tightly. The others said nothing.

"I'm waiting for an answer," Hogan growled.

He got a clipped "yes, sir" from Luck, followed by a subdued but resentful chorus from the others.

After a sharp look all around that finished with Lieutenant Hogan, the colonel said, "Lieutenant, you're with me. The rest of you get some sack time; you'll be up a lot of the night. And that's an order."

Hogan chose the tunnel branch that headed toward the cooler. He walked down it a long ways, far past the point that they were out of ordinary earshot from the others, hearing Ted's footsteps dogging his but refusing to turn to check on him. When he got to the point where the tunnel divided, one branch toward the cooler and the other toward the rec hall, he stopped and faced his son.

"I left orders for you to stay in the tunnel, Lieutenant. You endangered all of my men—my whole operation here—by disobeying me." He kept his voice cold and hard.

"Oh come on, we all know it's normal procedure for you to let airmen go upstairs," Ted started, but Hogan interrupted him, stepping closer and summoning every ounce of intimidating authority he could muster, his eyes blazing. Ted straightened himself up to attention.

"These are not normal circumstances, and that's immaterial anyway. I left a set of orders, Lieutenant, and you disobeyed them. Maybe Captain Luck lets you get away with such behavior, but lax discipline here will get a lot of men killed. The guards can walk into our barracks at any time. The _Kommandant of the camp_ can walk in there! You think they wouldn't recognize that you're not a prisoner who's been processed through normal channels? That they wouldn't immediately notice the resemblance between us? Find the dog tags with your name when they searched you? Do you realize that your presence up there would blow our entire operation apart? Get all my men shot?" He was breathing heavily, more incensed with anger than he could remember being in years. "Our mission is hazardous enough as it is, and you don't understand the nature of the risks we run and how much you endanger us, particularly up above. So for the safety of my men and my operation you'll obey my orders and not question my authority—is that clear, _Lieutenant_?!" He fixed his eyes on the younger man, whose Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed and looked back past him.

"Yes, sir." The lieutenant's voice was firm, though Hogan could see him vibrating slightly from tension.

Hogan held the glare a few more moments then finally broke it, turning from him to look back down the tunnel they'd come from. He took a deep breath and let it go, trying to release with it the anger and some of the anxiety that fueled it, then wrapped his arms around his torso.

"Permission to speak freely, sir?" Ted's voice was stiff.

Hogan swung back around. "All right. Let's hear what you've got to say for yourself."

"Okay, I see that I shouldn't have come up above. I apologize—sir. I . . . I was too mad to see straight."

"That's no excuse for not obeying a superior officer's orders," Hogan pointed out grimly.

"No. But officers shouldn't give preferential treatment to their sons, either!" the younger man objected hotly.

"I think I've just shown you in the last couple of minutes that I'm not, Lieutenant. I'm keeping the personal and the professional separate, because I have to."

"Oh yeah—pulling me away from my crew all the way down here for a private conversation isn't a sign of that."

Hogan stepped forward again. "I wouldn't bawl out any of my men for an infraction in front of the others, either, Lieutenant."

"You didn't have that consideration for Captain Luck!"

"You're out of line _again_, Lieutenant!"

"I cannot _believe_ the way you're pulling rank! _Colonel_ Hogan when it suits you, after pretending to be my dad, and all while faking that you're not favoring me."

"You've got no high ground to preach from on pulling rank, from what I overheard a few minutes ago," Hogan responded angrily, putting his hands on his hips. "And I'm not favoring you."

"You've gotta be kidding. You're protecting _me_. You're _over_protecting me! For God's sake, you've _ordered a plane_ to get me back to England instead of sending me the usual way!"

"The 'usual way' is too dangerous—"

"See, you're even _admitting_ it!"

"It's too dangerous for _us_, damnit! I'm not thinking of _you_ or even me, for that matter! It's for my crew, my network of helpers here in Germany!"

Ted crossed his arms tightly in front of his chest. "And just how is rescuing me with that special plane _not_ preferential treatment? Yeah, I know you're helping out one of my other crewmates since there's conveniently enough space for him in the plane too. But just tell me, how is leaving two-thirds of my crew behind to make their way through Nazi Germany while getting me clear _not_ favoring me?!"

Hogan dropped his arms to his side, fists clenched. "Since apparently Captain Luck didn't make it clear, that plane isn't, in fact, necessarily a safer way back for you and your buddy. It's probably more dangerous. Just think about the number of anti-aircraft guns between here and the closest British airfield. We've lost courier and supply planes before—a higher percentage than we've had men get caught on the escape route, in fact. If you think for one minute that putting you on that plane is making me feel better, think again."

Brought up short, Ted dropped his arms stared at him. "Then why are you sending me that way?"

"Because it's more secure." Hogan closed his eyes for a moment, then forced himself to continue. "As the commander of this unit, I can afford for you to get killed. What I can't afford is for you to get captured."

Ted looked away from him, his face white.

"The plane that's coming is a Lysander," Hogan continued. "Do you know that plane? It's small, light, unarmed . . . has a drop tank so it'll have enough fuel to get here and back again to northern England. It's great for landing in fields, like we need it to tonight, but it doesn't have a great track record for surviving flak hits. So," he paused, then pushed himself on, "you probably won't get out of it alive if it gets hit. You'd get killed, but not captured—whereas the odds of getting captured are a lot higher if you spend a week traveling overland. As it is, I'm going to have to take your dog tags before you get on the plane, so that if the worst happens, if it gets shot down . . . your body can't be identified. It'd start a trail that could lead right back here."

Hogan couldn't go on. Ted seemed struck wordless as well. So they both just stood there for some moments, as the silence built awkwardly. Ted finally broke it.

"I don't get why I'm so much more risky if captured than anyone else. You think I'm . . . what, more likely to talk than others are? Why? And why is my . . . my dead body in that plane so dangerous?" The challenge was gone from his voice; he sounded simply lost.

Hogan heaved a sigh, and looked up at the tunnel ceiling. "Because the SS review prisoner files," he answered quietly. "You bear my name—first name as well as last. And B- Ted, we do look alike. A _lot_ alike. My men have commented on the similarity. There'd be no way to deny the relationship. And there's a local Gestapo agent who is very suspicious of me. So if you were captured alive on the escape route, or even found dead in that plane, they'd know you had help getting out of Germany. Our not-so-friendly neighborhood Gestapo man would connect the dots, and would think quite rightly that I was the one who'd helped. Alive or dead, you'd lead them back here—without ever saying a word. And if you were alive, he'd use you against me, in ways neither of us even wants to think about."

Ted seemed unable to muster an answer to that. He put his hands in his trouser pockets, gazing at the floor of the tunnel, his head nodding almost imperceptibly as he digested what his father had just told him. Hogan watched him, his own jaw clamped tight, arms wrapped around himself. Finally, Ted spoke again.

"Okay, I see how it's dangerous for you and your team if I got captured or—um, identified now. Why you need to get me back this way. And at least all my crewmates will get back to England this way, we'll get back together there, get another plane. Maybe call it the _Lucky Strike II_." He smiled a little.

Hogan put his right hand to the bridge of his nose and rubbed it for just a moment. He didn't want to do this. He really didn't. He wished Ted had made the connection for himself . . . but he hadn't.

"You won't be flying with them over Europe again, Ted." He said it as gently as he could, but the effect on the young man was immediate.

"Wait—what?! You're _grounding_ me?! You can't _do_ that! They're my crew! Do you know how long it took me, how hard I worked, to get them to really accept me, young as I am? They thought I couldn't do anything. But I showed them. I'm good at this! And the Allies need pilots, you know that! You can't just take that away!" Ted's voice was shuddering with emotion, and Hogan could see the sense of betrayal in his eyes.

"I'm sorry, Ted. I truly am. But I have to. And if London's willing to send a plane over here for you this time, they're going to agree with me. The risk would be much the same any time you got captured. You'd be identified as my son. Same scenario."

He stepped forward, arm raised to put on Ted's shoulder sympathetically, but Ted backed away from him several steps, blocking him with his arms and shaking his head, his chest heaving, too upset to speak.

"Look, you can still—" Hogan broke off, hearing running footsteps pounding toward them down the tunnel. He dropped his arm as Carter burst in, his arms pinwheeling as he skidded to a stop.

"Kommandant Klink is looking for you, Colonel," he panted. "He's out in the compound. Something about an accordion player? We told Schultz you were in the Rec Hall. Figured it would be closest for you. You gotta get back up above right away!"

"Take the lieutenant back to the main area," Hogan directed. He looked back at Ted. "We'll talk more later."

Ted just shook his head. "I have nothing more to say to you. Ever! _Sir_," he added viciously.

Carter drew in his breath with a small hiss at that. But Colonel Hogan just turned away, grim faced, and headed determinedly down the tunnel for the Recreation Hall ladder.

ooOoo

_Author's Notes: _

_1) Very special thanks to 80sarcades for his help in figuring out the proper problems for the radio to have in this chapter. He plugged a big plot hole I realized I'd fallen into! _

_2) In the television series we see at least one plane explode from being hit by anti-aircraft flak after dropping a courier to Stalag 13, in "Operation Briefcase."_


	7. Chapter 7: Lull

Kinch looked up from his seat behind the radio table as Carter and Lieutenant Hogan entered the main tunnel hub. Carter gave the lieutenant an uncharacteristic dark look out of the side of his eyes as he came over to Kinch.

Lieutenant Hogan either didn't catch it or didn't care, seeking out the sleeping chamber immediately. Kinch could hear a distant, soft, worried "Hey, Teddy, you okay?" from one of the _Lucky Strike_ crew checking on him as he came in. It sounded like Captain Luck. Then came an answering mumble back that he couldn't quite catch.

"You found the colonel? Gave him the message?" Kinch inquired, worried about Carter's expression.

"Yeah," Carter replied flatly. "He went straight up to the Rec Hall."

"Okay. Addison and Foster were up there and ready to cover for him if needed." Kinch eyed Carter, who had picked up a pencil from the radio table and was turning it in his hands. "You okay?" Kinch asked.

Carter shrugged. He glanced over his shoulder, then spoke very low, just above a whisper. "The colonel and the lieutenant must've had a big fight. The last thing the lieutenant said was he didn't want to talk to the colonel again—ever."

Kinch grimaced at the thought of how Colonel Hogan would react to that. "Well, if the lieutenant's temper matches his father's, I guess it's hardly surprising they clash." He kept his voice low too, hoping to soothe Carter as well as keep their conversation private.

"Yeah, but—geez. Wouldn't you give anything to be able to see and talk to your dad?" Carter rapped the pencil hard on the table, then started slightly at the noise and put it down.

Kinch stared off into the space, visualizing his father. It had been so long since he'd seen him—over two years. "Of course I would," he answered automatically, then shook his head. "Not that I'd ever want him here. I can't even imagine that. I'd want to be home with him." He looked up at Carter. "But we grew up close. You did with your dad too, right?"

Carter nodded.

"But the colonel and the lieutenant didn't," Kinch continued. "That'd make all the difference in the world."

"I suppose." Carter kicked at the hard-packed dirt floor. "I just always thought the colonel would make a great dad for a kid someday. But his real son doesn't seem to think so. I started to try to tell him the colonel's a good guy and he shouldn't talk to him like that, but he just told me to mind my own business."

"Well, they're in a complicated situation, and we don't know all the ins and outs of it. So it's probably best if we steer clear," Kinch said diplomatically, then shifted the subject. "Look, we need to help the colonel as best we can right now. Do you have your shopping list for London? I'm supposed to get it off in our next contact in ninety minutes."

"Okay, I'll have it for you soon." Carter gave a final dissatisfied kick to the floor, and then disappeared down the tunnel that led to his lab.

Kinch settled back down to his own task of figuring out what should be on his part of the shopping list. He was methodically inspecting the radio for wearing parts beyond the broken headset—the dampness and dust of the tunnel were always hard on it despite the drop sheet he used to protect it when it wasn't in use—when he heard a soft step. He glanced up, expecting to see Carter back, but instead saw Lieutenant Hogan drifting over towards him. The dim lighting of the tunnel made the lieutenant look very young. Just a kid—but doing a man's job, Kinch thought with a small pang of sympathy that almost overrode his earlier aggravation from their confrontation up in the barracks. Like so many other young guys in this war.

"You ought to be sleeping, sir," he advised quietly, trying to keep his voice kind despite his annoyance and worry over the young officer's insubordination to the colonel. He figured that whatever kind of conversations the two had had with each other, the kid had to have been through an emotional wringer today, so it wasn't surprising if he couldn't sleep. But he was going to be up all night, so it'd be good if he could do so now.

The lieutenant shrugged. "Too keyed up to sleep, and I'll keep the others up." He kept his voice down too. "I, uh, I wanted to apologize for earlier. I shouldn't have pulled rank on you that way. I know you were trying to follow your orders."

"Your orders too, Lieutenant," Kinch couldn't help answering.

"Yeah. I know." He picked up the same pencil that Carter had been worrying earlier and toyed with it. "I just couldn't see it—was too mad to see it right then. But I shouldn't have pushed you that way, and I'm sorry about it."

"You're in a tough situation," Kinch observed neutrally. "And it can be hard to separate the personal and professional sometimes."

Lieutenant Hogan scowled. "You sound like my old man. Except of course he says that he can do it with me, no sweat."

Kinch raised his eyebrows slightly. "I didn't know he'd said that, but . . . well, I've spent a lot of time with him over the past couple of years, so I guess he's rubbed off on me. It's not surprising if I occasionally sound like him." He fixed the younger man in his gaze seriously. "But don't think it doesn't cost him, in this situation. I know him well enough to tell that last night and today have taken one of the biggest tolls on him that I've seen."

Lieutenant Hogan stopped fiddling with the pencil and narrowed his eyes, looking at Kinch searchingly. Kinch kept his own gaze steady, but wondered if he should have taken his own advice to Carter and steered clear of the subject.

"You seem close to him," the lieutenant remarked at last, dropping his eyes and setting the pencil down carefully.

"I'm his chief of operations and SEA.* And we all live in each other's pockets here. So yes, I guess you could say we're pretty close. As close as he lets anyone in. He's a pretty private man, despite that outgoing exterior."

The younger man slouched against the brace that supported the tunnel ceiling for a moment, then abruptly asked, "Can I ask you something, military ranks aside?"

A little warily, Kinch answered, "Okay. Shoot."

"So what do you think of my father—or I guess I should say, of _Colonel Hogan_? Your honest opinion, not just what you think you ought to say about him as your CO. I won't tell him, or anyone else. I just—I want—no, I _need_ an outside perspective at the moment." He bit his lip. "Please."

Kinch smiled slightly. "Well, mine's hardly unbiased." He thought for a moment about how to start, what he could say honestly that might help the lieutenant the most—and the colonel too. "At times he can be the most exasperating man I've ever known. He wants the impossible done—and part of what's exasperating is that he constantly finds ways for us to do it. He works us hard, long hours above and below ground, but it's important work, and we all know it needs doing. He can be moody, and he gets snappish when things aren't going well or when he's tired. But he's carrying a lot on his shoulders, so I'm willing to cut him slack for that. And, I have to admit he'll often apologize for it when he barks unfairly, which is more than I can say for most other officers."

He glanced upward, thinking of the apology he'd just gotten from the younger Hogan in front of him. The lieutenant managed a small, self-conscious upturn of his own lips, but it quickly faded.

Kinch leaned back against the wall and folded his arms before continuing, highly aware of how the lieutenant was watching him with dark, guarded eyes. "But the colonel's also the most brilliant leader I've ever seen. This is an all-volunteer outfit. And he got hundreds of men to volunteer for it—not just those of us who are the core crew and run the day-to-day missions, but everyone else in the camp, all the support teams and cover staff. He didn't order us to do all this. He _persuaded_ us, even though the whole idea was completely crazy." Kinch chuckled affectionately. "He does have a silver tongue, that's for sure. It's amazing what he can talk you into."

"Yeah," the lieutenant agreed glumly. "It's one of the things my parents dislike most about him."

Kinch noted the reference to the young Hogan's grandparents, but let it pass without comment. "I think it's related to his sense of fun, too. He gets a kick out of bamboozling the Kommandant and guards who run the camp, so that we can make our missions work. But he'll play with us, too, even when we're the instigators of the joke on him, and that's also unusual for an officer in my experience. I remember one time we'd dug a false tunnel on his orders, as a decoy for the Kommandant to find so we could get our guys out the regular tunnel. When the colonel came in the barracks we wouldn't tell him where the fake tunnel was, made him guess and hunt for it. And he was willing to play along, even enjoyed it." Kinch smiled at the memory, and the lieutenant's mouth tugged to the left in a slight half grin.

Kinch grew serious, and leaned forward again, resting his right arm on the radio table, toying with the clipboard lying there as he spoke. "Most importantly, I guess I'd say he's fair. He treats us all equally, listens to our ideas, uses them if he thinks they're good, credits us for them too. That's rare, in my experience, in men in general and officers in particular. He doesn't ask of us anything he's not willing to do himself, up in camp and down here. He'll even take a turn with the dishes sometimes. He gets a hundred percent from all of us, because he gives a hundred and ten percent of himself. We do a lot of the heavy lifting, but he takes his turn at that too, plus he's the front man with the Germans. That means he's often in the greatest danger. But he's also a genius at keeping them off balance, at manipulating the Kommandant and guards into doing what he wants, to play their roles to our advantage. He's sharp, always on the lookout for how he can turn whatever weak spots he sees to our benefit."

As he spoke, Kinch could see Lieutenant Hogan listening carefully, holding himself still as he leaned against the ceiling brace, hands in his trouser pockets, trying to absorb what he was hearing.

"Why's he doing all this? Was he ordered to? Couldn't he have just escaped? . . . Come home?" the younger man eventually asked, then interrupted himself bitterly. "Or back to England, I mean. Of course he'd never have come _home_."

Kinch shook his head, troubled by the younger man's words and their tone, unsure where they were coming from and if what he was about to say would help or not. "No, he wasn't ordered to do it. The whole thing was the colonel's idea. He assessed the camp—the Kommandant and the guards, the whole area—and decided it could work. He found a couple of underground contacts when we were outside on work trips, got a bunch of us working to dig the tunnels, build the radio, everything. And once he got in touch with contacts he had in London and got permission for the operation, they helped build the escape network, got us supplies, and then started using us for other things too." He paused for a moment, then added, "Everything you're seeing, and a lot that you aren't—all this is _his_ vision. You, and a lot of other downed airmen, would be prisoners or dead right now if he hadn't built this. Let me tell you, building it was the hardest thing I'd ever done—till we started operating it. But we've saved a lot of lives, kept a lot of people out of the hands of the Nazis. With help, of course."

"You didn't say why he's doing it," the lieutenant responded after a moment.

Kinch placed his clipboard back on the radio table, and folded his hands, considering that. "I think for him it goes way beyond just duty," he answered slowly and seriously. "It's because he really loathes the Nazis, what they stand for, what they've done, what they're doing to people here who aren't part of the Nazi Party, the destruction they've wreaked on the rest of Europe. I guess for most airmen that stays fairly abstract; you focus on targets to bomb, on avoiding flak, handling attacking fighters, getting your mission done and back to base safely. You know it's important to win the war, and you want to stay alive, and that's fair enough. But you don't see what's really going on. Down here on the ground—well, it's a different story."

The lieutenant stared down towards the radio, but his gaze was unseeing. "He was always anti-Nazi. Even before the war started over here, he kept insisting that Hitler was more than just a nut, that he was really dangerous. Then once it did start . . . well, he was saying that same thing the last time I saw him, trying to explain to me why he had to go to England. I heard him and my Pops arguing about it." He stopped, swallowed, then continued haltingly. "I sided with Pops. Didn't think he should go. I wouldn't . . . I didn't even say goodbye to him. Didn't hear from him afterwards, so I thought he was mad at me . . . though he says now that he wrote me." His voice sounded dubious and he paused for just a second before adding, "Then in '42 my grandparents—his parents, I mean—wrote me to say he'd been shot down."

"I've seen the letters," Kinch replied quietly. "The envelopes, anyway, with your name on them, when I was collecting them for mail call. I didn't know which relative you were. But he's been writing you."

The lieutenant looked down the tunnel and compressed his lips for a moment. "He never told you about me, huh."

Kinch didn't like the bitter tone the colored that remark. "Lots of us find it hard to talk much about home while we're here," he answered. "Plus, rank does make a difference. He doesn't share much about his private life with any of us. But it goes both ways—or doesn't, to be more accurate, I guess. I don't think I've ever told him about my sister. But that doesn't mean I'm not thinking about her a lot."

The lieutenant fell silent, digesting that. Kinch let it ride for a bit, ostensibly returning his attention to the radio and his list.

"What happened to him when he was shot down? Did they . . . hurt him when they caught him?" The question seemed dragged out reluctantly from the lieutenant, and he'd folded his arms tightly against his chest.

How to answer that? Honesty seemed the best route with this kid—as it always was with his father. But definitely not the whole truth. "He was captured by an SS troop. Usually the Germans treat officers reasonably well, the Luftwaffe takes them and they abide by the Geneva Convention. Our officers get interrogated, of course, but no real rough stuff."

"But my dad was treated . . . roughly?"

The kid had seen through the dodge. As sharp as his father, apparently. Kinch paused, deliberating before answering, certain he shouldn't give too much detail. This wasn't his story, and he had no idea what the colonel would want. The less said, the better.

"Yes," he finally answered. "They turned him over to the Gestapo, who had him for a while. But they didn't break him, and he came out of it fighting mad. He'd no sooner got here than he started to organize the prisoners. The guys here were already working on a tunnel, but he decided it was too close to the surface. So they dug deeper and by luck found this old mine that a bunch of our tunnels are based on. They figured it was most of a century old, half collapsed and completely forgotten. Don't know what kind of ore the miners were hoping to find around here—I'm guessing from what we've seen that they didn't find anything—but it gave our guys a good head start. Then the Colonel decided that it could be used for more and better things than just a mass escape. So, here we are. And able to help you."

The lieutenant looked at him carefully. "'They'? You mean you weren't here when he got here?"

Kinch shook his head. "LeBeau and Newkirk were. I got here a couple of months later, and Carter a bit after me. There was still plenty of digging and set-up work to do. But I wouldn't be here if Colonel Hogan hadn't insisted on it with the Krauts. They could've sent me some place a lot worse. So I owe him a lot. He gave me a chance."

The kid's face crumpled, and Kinch realized he'd made some kind of misstep. Lieutenant Hogan swung away from the table, clearly agitated.

"He won't give _me_ a chance, though. He says I can't fly again, too dangerous for his operation here with all of you."

Kinch sighed. So that was it. No wonder the kid was so upset.

"I'm sorry; I know that's got to be hard," he said, trying to sound sympathetic.

Lieutenant Hogan turned back, looking at Kinch searchingly. His face changed, cooled—just as Kinch had seen the colonel's do on a hundred occasions. "But you agree with him." The lieutenant's voice made it a statement, not a question.

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, but I do."

"Why?" the lieutenant asked stiffly.

"Because it's too much risk to give the Nazis a chance at that kind of leverage over the colonel," Kinch answered levelly. "If they got their hands on you, you'd be an awful weapon they could use against him. We got incredibly lucky picking you up last night. The chances of you getting shot down again are too good, unfortunately, if you keep flying missions over Germany, but it's unlikely that it'd happen right here a second time. The Germans would most likely get you anywhere else. We just can't chance that."

"I don't get it! Why am I so much worse for him than any of you? You said you two were close. But he and I aren't! He _lives_ with you guys. He _never_ has with me! I've hardly ever even seen him! I may have known him more years, but you've actually spent far more time with him and known him far better than I ever have!" The lieutenant's voice had risen.

"Because no matter what you're his son, not a man under his command. And that makes the difference." Captain Luck's voice was unexpected, and both men turned in surprise. "I've been thinking about this all day," the captain continued, addressing the lieutenant. "And much as I hate to admit it in this case, the colonel is right."

Lieutenant Hogan said nothing; he didn't have to. The betrayed look on his face said plenty.

Luck stepped forward and put his hand on the young man's shoulder. "There's no man I'd choose as my copilot over you," he said firmly, looking right at him. "You have the skill and the guts needed; you have a cool head under fire. Your age doesn't matter. I know you've worried about that, but you've proven yourself to me and every man on the _Strike_, ten times over." He squeezed tightly. "But sometimes we get caught up in situations that are bigger than we are. This whole war, just for starters. But right now, right here," he looked around the tunnel, "we're in a unique place. Pilots are precious, and there aren't enough of us, but still, there are other men who can fly bombing missions. But I'm guessing," he looked over at Kinch, dropping his arm, "that there's no other group like this."

Kinch nodded.

"In fact, I'm willing to bet that your activities aren't limited to picking up stranded crews," Luck added.

Kinch looked down at his clipboard, face neutral. "I can't comment on that, sir."

"No, you shouldn't, Sergeant. But anyone with eyes and a brain can see the possibilities here. And how dangerous it is for all of you. And therefore how you need to minimize all possible risks."

"But no one's answering my question!" Frustration ruled Lieutenant Hogan's voice. "I don't see why I'm a greater risk on later flight missions. On this one, okay, sure: my—uh, the colonel told me how I in particular could be traced back to you guys here. But how am I more of a threat to him than anyone else, even if I do get captured on some later mission? There'd be no more evidence of a link to this operation than with anyone else. And I'm no more likely to tell them about it under questioning than you are, sir." He glared at his commanding officer. "Even less, quite frankly, since I've got more stake in protecting him."

"And he has a stake in protecting you, far greater than he has for anyone under his command here," Luck answered back. "That's the problem."

Kinch stepped back in. "Lieutenant, suppose the Gestapo got him. We're as careful as we can be, but that could happen any day to any of us; we all know it. And now suppose the Luftwaffe had you, and the Gestapo knew that. They'd put the two of you in a cell, and start working on you. It's a common enough tactic for the Gestapo, to use family against each other. Either the colonel would break, to try to help you, or he wouldn't, to try to save everyone else. But that would break him just as surely and permanently, in a different way."

Luck nodded in agreement. "He'd have two irreconcilable duties, as commander and father. God knows it's hard enough for any officer to lose men under his command. But sometimes it happens, or it's even necessary in the course of missions. That's the job. But you could never be just a man under his command, Ted."

The young man shook his head. "I don't matter that way to him," he said, his voice near a whisper.

"Yes," Kinch responded, also softly but with a penetrating look. "You do."

Lieutenant Hogan met his eyes for a moment, then glanced away, blinking hard several times and then swallowing before giving the smallest nod in return.

Kinch glanced at Captain Luck, who was looking at the lieutenant with concern in his eyes but shifted his gaze to catch Kinch's. Kinch flicked his eyes toward the sleeping alcove.

The captain took the hint, nodding slightly then touching the young man's shoulder. "C'mon, Ted. Let's go talk some more. Or lie down and rest, whichever you'd prefer."

The lieutenant nodded again, and quietly followed his CO from the chamber, while Kinch stared absently at his shopping list, his mind elsewhere entirely.

ooOoo

_*Author's Note: _

_1) Hogan introduces Kinch to Crittendon in "The Ride of the Valkyrie" as "in charge of operations"; what exactly that means isn't clear, but it sounds much more authoritative than the roles he assigns to the rest of his team members in that episode. A lot of fan fiction refers to Kinch as Hogan's second in command (I've used the term myself in one of my stories). But as best I can tell from what I've read recently, Kinch would not be Hogan's "second in command" because non-commissioned officers (NCOs) in the United States Army cannot "hold command," because they have not been granted such authority by the head of state. But NCOs can "have charge" of units they are responsible for. A good term that the United States military seems to actually use and that fits the role Kinch generally seems to play in the series, and even more so in much fan fiction, is SEA: Senior Enlisted Advisor. The SEA, as the name implies, acts as an advisor to the commanding officer. So that's why I chose that term for this story. Thanks to Sgt. Moffitt for answering some questions and letting me bounce ideas on this topic off her. _

_2) Kinch's memory of the joke his men play on Hogan comes from the episode "Reservations Are Required." Hogan offers to do the dishes near the end of the episode "The Missing Klink," saying that the humility will do him good._


	8. Chapter 8: Retrenchment

When Hogan rapped on the rec hall tunnel exit, it immediately opened, displaying the anxious face of Corporal Foster. "Schultz is right outside," he filled his CO in as Hogan climbed up into the room and dusted himself off. "He asked if you were in here, and we told him if he'd wait a moment you would be. He decided . . ."

"To see nothing till I got here," Hogan finished for him. "Right."

Addison hurried up. "The Kommandant is out there now too," he whispered. "Schultz is delaying him."

"Okay, I'll go deal with them. One of you go hunt up Corporal McIntosh from Barracks 13 and bring him over. Tell him I need his accordion-playing talents. And let's hope he's got some," he muttered to himself, crossing the large open rec room with the other two dogging his footsteps.

Opening the door, he found Schultz blocking it. Fortunately, the Sergeant was of a size that he could easily delay Klink simply by standing at the door.

"Schuuultz! I said, stand aside, you oaf!" Klink's order had nearly reached shriek level.

"B-b-b-but-but-but—" Schultz stuttered as he stalled desperately.

"Hi, Kommandant. You looking for me?" Hogan put in, peering over Schultz's shoulder. He could see the big sergeant go nearly limp with relief, followed by an immediate stiffening as he smartly stepped out of Colonel Klink's way, standing to attention next to the door.

"Mmmph!" Klink glared and shook his fist at his sergeant as Hogan came through the door out into the compound. "Yes, Hogan. Do you have a name for me on that matter we spoke of this morning?" He turned his scowl to Hogan, clearly expecting the colonel to have failed to fulfill his promise.

"As a matter of fact, I do," Hogan answered with false geniality, crossing his arms across his chest as he automatically slipped into his usual persona when dealing with Klink. "Corporal Foster here was just about to go find the man I have in mind. Go on, Foster," he added, as the corporal gave a quick salute and headed out, quietly accompanied by Addison. "Shall we go to your office while we wait for Foster to bring him, Kommandant?"

"Yes, I suppose," Klink sulked, apparently vaguely feeling like someone was getting away with something but unable to put his finger on just who or what.

Once settled in Klink's office, Klink behind the desk and Hogan in the chair on the other side, Hogan reached automatically for the cigar humidor. Klink grabbed it away to safety, then reconsidered as he saw Hogan's sardonically quirked eyebrows.

Hogan stretched his legs out and folded his hands across his stomach. "I won't order McIntosh to do this, you know," he commented amiably.

Klink huffed, then opened the humidor, selected two cigars, and handed one to Hogan.

"_Danke, _Kommandant," Hogan murmured, sniffing the cigar with pleasure, before tucking it carefully away in his jacket. He grinned. "I still won't order him to do it."

Klink was saved from answering by a knock on the door, and _Fräulein_ Hilda's entrance. "Corporal McIntosh," she announced, moving aside for him to enter, then departing after dimpling as usual at Hogan, who summoned up a small smile for her.

McIntosh turned out to be a slightly small, sandy-haired man of roundish face, meek demeanor, and American uniform, despite his Scottish surname. Hogan only vaguely recognized him from his internment interview a few months back; he hadn't been involved in any of the covert operations so far, though he'd passed all the security checks. McIntosh was obviously puzzled about the mysterious summons to the Kommandant's office, which he had not seen since the day of his arrival in camp.

"Now," Klink said, smiling to put McIntosh at ease; the effect, however, was to simply disconcert the corporal still further, "I understand that you play the accordion."

"Ah, no sir," McIntosh stammered, looking at Colonel Hogan, clearly alarmed as the look on Klink's face switched from affable to irate.

"You don't?" Hogan sighed, wishing he'd put more time into checking the information out; he remembered now that Kinch had been unsure. The problems posed by the arrival and impending departure of Bobby—no, Ted, he had to remember that—and the _Lucky Strike_ crew were distracting him too much. He shook his head slightly: he needed to focus on this right now. "Do you play any other instruments?" he asked hopefully.

"Well, sir, I play concertina. It's kind of a cousin of the accordion, since they're both free-reed instruments," McIntosh offered hesitantly. "And I play piano," he added. "But I guess I'd be really rusty on either; I haven't played since I got here."

"Well then," Klink said brightly, "if you play concertina and piano, I'm sure you can manage the accordion. It's really just a cross between them."

McIntosh's mouth dropped open in astonishment at this bewildering piece of reasoning, and he glanced over at Hogan in mute appeal.

"Corporal McIntosh," Hogan started, trying to rescue the situation, "Kommandant Klink is looking for someone to play accordion for a girls' gymnastics team performance in Hammelburg, to improve the townspeople's morale. Their regular player got called up by the Wehrmacht. We thought you might be able to fill in for the practice sessions and the performance, but I'm not ordering you to do so. It's your own choice—if you think you could manage the instrument."

He watched with some amusement as the words "girls' gymnastic team" sank in. McIntosh brightened enormously. Clearly the offer was having an excellent effect on _his_ morale.

"Why, yes sir, Colonel—err, Colonels! I'm sure I could manage! All it would take would be some practice, right? I mean, it can't be all that different. I'd just need the instrument for a while so that I could work on it. Practice, I mean. And meet with the girls—I mean, the young ladies, so I'd know what they wanted. I'd be glad to do anything for them!" McIntosh beamed.

"I'll just bet you would," Hogan chuckled.

Klink looked somewhat askance at the musician's enthusiasm, but accepted the offer. "Very well, Corporal. I'll have Sergeant Schultz send a man into town this afternoon to fetch the instrument so that you can practice on it. And I'll check with the leader of the gymnastics team, _Fräulein_ Ulla, to see when you're needed."

"_Fräulein_ Uuullaaaa," McIntosh breathed ecstatically, drawing out the syllables of her name just as Klink had in the morning. Hogan rolled his eyes.

"Corporal McIntosh!" Klink snapped. "You will confine yourself to your professional role as musician for these ladies!"

"Sure thing, Kommandant," McIntosh drew himself up to his full five feet, seven inches. "I'll be as good a musician as I possibly can for them to dance to." His twinkling eyes suggested he was fully aware of how women could be swayed by music—even an accordion's.

"It is for gymnastics—athletics! Not a dance team!" Klink corrected with some asperity.

"Yes, sir, Kommandant," McIntosh brightly agreed.

Hogan suspected that for the new accordion player it was a distinction without a difference. Well, he'd gotten this hare started; he'd have to see what he could do with it over the next few weeks. There had to be some way that this out-of-camp contact would be useful at some point down the road. Once Klink dismissed McIntosh to go dream of girls dancing to his tune, Hogan settled down to bargaining the price of his service. No point in letting the opportunity go to waste when he could get some good out of it for the rest of the camp. That was his job, and he'd better do it right this time.

ooOoo

When Hogan came back to the barracks, having finally settled his dickering with Klink, he found Newkirk and LeBeau seated at the table with Saunders, Garlotti, Davis, and Barnes. They broke off their conversation as Hogan came in. Remembering the look of shocked epiphany on Saunders's face when Bobby had come up earlier, Hogan could just guess what they'd been talking about, especially given the too-innocent looks they all immediately pasted on their faces. Calling them on it didn't seem like the best idea, though. No point in reinforcing the importance of the subject of their gossip by chastising them for it, especially since he had no concrete evidence of what they had been discussing.

"Did you fellas get the shopping lists finished for Kinch? And get the teams started on papers and suits?" he asked instead.

He got a chorus of "yes, sirs," and decided to leave it at that. "I'll be in my office. Send Kinch in when he's got the final list assembled," he added, guessing that both he and Carter must be below. God only knew what was happening down there, but the two of them should be able to keep a lid on it, he decided, closing the door behind him and leaving the others to their gossip. His own presence down below was just likely to worsen the situation.

Now finally back in privacy, Hogan sat down on the lower bunk, sagging down with his elbows on his knees and his hands drooping between them, too tired and disheartened for once to haul himself up to the top bunk he usually preferred. He'd spent half the night thinking about how to handle the crew below, and especially his son, knowing that it was going to be difficult given the last argument he'd had with Bobby four years ago and the lack of response to any of his overtures since then.

At least now he knew why—and now that he knew he couldn't think of the Mahoneys without a near blinding fury possessing him. He'd known that they had never liked him, had never forgiven him for eloping with Katie, had seen that choice (and maybe with some reason, he could privately admit to himself now) as disrespectful. On the other hand, he had doubted then and still doubted now that they would ever have come around to accept him—and Katie herself had thought waiting would do no good on that score. It was one reason she'd agreed to elope with him. And once she was gone, they had wanted him to have as little contact with Bobby as possible. Still, he hadn't believed they'd actually keep his letters back from his son, though that expectation seemed ridiculously naïve now that he knew they had done so. That long silence wasn't the result of a teenaged boy's sense of hurt and desertion; it was from being kept in the dark that he had a father who cared about him.

Hogan sighed and rubbed his eyes. He had wanted so badly last night to put their relationship back on track, had so carefully thought through what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it, but the day had gone badly so far nonetheless. In fact, it could hardly have gone worse. The final furious comment from the most recent fight with the young lieutenant rang hauntingly in his ears: _"I have nothing more to say to you. Ever! __Sir__."_

Well, he couldn't blame the kid for being upset at losing his place in the crew he'd worked so hard to become a part of. Luck, despite his resistance to breaking up his crew, seemed intelligent—and after all he did play ball when pushed. He'd gotten his whole crew out alive from a mortally damaged plane; that spoke well for him too, as a pilot and a commander. He was probably a good officer to have learned under, been a co-pilot for. His protectiveness toward his crew was heartening, even if inconvenient in some ways at the moment. It was too bad that he'd no longer really be Bob– no, _Ted's_ CO after tonight. (He _had_ to remember that name change, he scolded himself.) Luck had certainly earned Ted's loyalty and trust. It was no wonder that Ted was upset and angry about losing his place under the man's command, especially given that they were evidently close enough that Ted had shared his family background with his CO.

Luck's final comment from their earlier discussion in the tunnel came back to him: "_I guess you should have let him carry the name of the family that raised him. Sir_."

That still made him wince. Most likely because Luck was right. If he hadn't been prepared to take on Bobby as a baby and raise him as his own, he should have let the Mahoneys have the boy fully, let them adopt him and give him their name. Let the boy be the Mahoney he was raised as and obviously wanted to be, not have to carry a different last name that always reminded him that he was something of an outsider in their family, a grandson rather than a son. Hogan couldn't help thinking dismally that apparently all he'd managed to do in the past nineteen years was make Bobby—now Ted—resentful of the way he'd dropped in and out of his life.

His reverie was interrupted by a knock on the door. He sighed silently. Probably Kinch.

"Come in," he answered, straightening himself up.

Kinch came in, doing one small double take when he didn't see his CO at the desk, and a second when he did see him sitting on the lower bunk, to all appearances completely and quite uncharacteristically idle. "Got the shopping list complete, Colonel," he said, handing it over for inspection.

Hogan ran his eye down the items. It was a sensible list of needs and requests: various parts for their all-important radio came first, including a new headset, followed by cloth, thread, yarns, and buttons for clothes; paper and inks, all of varying sizes, weights, and colors for their forged papers; film and developing chemicals; foodstuffs and spices of different kinds so LeBeau could continue working his special brand of magic; and several types of explosives, wires, detonators, and timers, so Carter could do his. The food list was topped with "coffee," written in all capitals; another more cribbed handwriting had scribbled "tea" in even larger letters slanted off to the side and then underlined it twice. The ancient argument tugged the left side of his mouth almost into a half grin. He nodded and handed it back. "Get that off to London; they should be able to get most of it together in time. Tell them we'll need it sorted into five packs for transport back to camp from the plane."

Kinch nodded and turned to leave, then hesitated and turned back. "Lieutenant Hogan was still awake a few minutes ago, sir."

Hogan scowled. "So I take it Carter gave a full report to you? Like Saunders, Newkirk, and LeBeau were filling in the others when I came in the barracks?"

"Carter didn't hear much, just gathered that you two were at odds," Kinch answered cautiously.

Hogan snorted. "Well, that's putting it mildly." He slumped, resting his elbows on his knees again.

Kinch looked down at him with concern; it was rare—and somewhat alarming—to see the colonel this dispirited. Still, what was weighing his CO down wasn't the usual business of their operation; it was the unexpected eruption of his personal life into their life at Stalag 13. That could throw anyone off.

"I was just realizing I've never really made it work," Hogan mused aloud, and Kinch nearly held his breath, not wanting to break this unusual moment of the colonel confiding in him. "I should have left Bob– I mean, _Ted_, with the Mahoneys, let him be theirs, not tried to see him."

"I guess I can see why you might think that, given what you told us at breakfast," Kinch responded cautiously. "But when he got here last night he was obviously really glad to see you, Colonel. And he's turned out well. I mean, a second lieutenant at nineteen, copilot on a Marauder: he's obviously very capable. You've got to be proud of him."

"Of course I am!" Hogan straightened up, his voice vehement, but then his shoulders drooped a bit. "I'm not sure I have the right to be, though. He isn't what he is because of me." He paused, thinking over their first conversation. "At least, not much," he added.

"Colonel, just go talk to him again."

Hogan shook his head. "As Carter no doubt told you," he scowled, "he made it very clear he doesn't want to talk to me. And . . . he does have a lot of real reasons to resent me, both past and present. I think I'd have to order him to listen to me, and I just can't do that to him, or to myself either. At this point, I should probably leave him alone, limit the damage."

"With all due respect, sir, I think that's wrong." Hogan glanced sharply up at him but didn't interrupt, so Kinch gathered his resolve and went on. "Forgive me if I'm interfering where I'm not wanted, Colonel, but leaving things the way they are between you two right now is a mistake. And I think he'd talk to you now."

"Oh?" Hogan frowned. "And just why's that?"

"It's a dangerous war, sir. You know that. You might regret it if you don't straighten things out between you while he's here. While you can. Plus, he and I talked some." Kinch could see the Colonel tense. "I think he's coming around, sir."

"What did you talk about?" Hogan asked warily.

"Nothing he's not supposed to know—nothing classified beyond what he's already seen. Just . . . what we're doing here. What _you're_ doing here."

"Kinch, sometimes I don't know what I'm doing here," Hogan sighed.

"Yes, you do, sir."

Hogan eyed him. "You sound very sure of that."

"You just get tired sometimes. We all do." Kinch spread his hands. "But we all know what we're working for. What we're working against. Why it's important. How we're making a difference. How _you're_ making a difference, Colonel."

Hogan stood up, eyes traveling to the window. "Yeah, I suppose. It's just . . . with him being here, it's like I can see this whole other life I didn't choose, didn't live." He crossed his arms in front of him. "Maybe I could have taken him on, not joined the Army, raised him myself if I wanted to be his father, even without his mother. Apparently he wanted that, at least some of the time. But it's way too late to expect him to see me that way now."

Kinch leaned against the bunk. "I can see why that 'other life' looks good to you right now. But to be frank, Colonel, a lot of other people would be much worse off if you'd done that."

Hogan turned back to him and shook his head. "The Army's a big outfit. Someone else would have done the jobs I've done."

"No," Kinch said firmly, standing up straight again. "Not here. This outfit wouldn't exist without you, Colonel, if you hadn't been here to start it. All that we've done getting people out, passing on information, stopping shipments, delaying troops, destroying munitions: none of that would have gotten done. We've made a big impact on the war for the Allies. You _know_ that, sir."

Hogan looked down at the floor, and after a moment he nodded.

Kinch looked down too, sticking his hands in his pockets, then continued more quietly, "And, well, _I_ have to be glad you got here, Colonel, because otherwise I'd probably be in a concentration camp instead of here. Maybe dead. Klink wouldn't have stood up for keeping me without you pushing so hard for it. So I know getting here was a hard road for you, sir, and that you've paid some big prices along the way—but there's a bunch of people grateful you've been here, Colonel. Starting with me."

Hogan swallowed, looking over at his radio man. Kinch lifted his eyes and held his gaze for a moment before looking back down at the floor, blinking hard a couple of times. Hogan nodded, then took a deep breath and let it out, unsure what to say.

Kinch added quietly, "I think the lieutenant is starting to see some of that too. Try him again, Colonel. You don't have much time before that plane gets here tonight, sir—don't waste it."

"Well, I try to follow good advice when I get it," Hogan responded huskily. "Sounds like I just got some."

Kinch nodded, smiling just a bit, and turned to open the door. He could hear Colonel Hogan following right on his heels as he left the small office.

ooOoo

_Author's Note: You can see a guy who looks rather like my description of McIntosh playing accordion as part of the backup band for LeBeau's song in "Praise the Fuhrer and Pass the Ammunition," though he's probably a bit taller than I describe him._


	9. Chapter 9: Armistice

Back down in the tunnel, Kinch headed for the radio and began the process of contacting London. Hogan walked softly over to the sleeping alcove and peered in.

On the closest bunk, Ted was sitting up, knees drawn up, his head pillowed on his arms crossed over them. Hogan had seen exhausted men sleep this way before, but the upright tenseness of Ted's body made clear that he was awake. Hogan reached down and gently touched his shoulder and then, when Ted looked up with a start, silently jerked his head towards the main room. Ted gave him a long stare, which Hogan met, raising his chin slightly. Then the younger man rose quietly, mindful of his sleeping crewmates, and followed his father out of the chamber.

Hogan led him down to Carter's lab, which was far enough down the tunnel that they didn't have to worry about being overheard unless they started shouting. Hogan hoped beyond anything that they wouldn't, that they could really talk this time instead. He was determined to try, and to keep a tight rein on his own temper. Two footlockers sat on the side of the chamber, across from the shelves stocked with chemicals and the bench where Carter did his work. Hogan pulled the two footlockers out slightly away from the wall so that they could face each other and sat down on one of them, gesturing for Ted to take the second. They sat there for a moment in awkward silence, until Hogan took a deep breath to speak, but Ted suddenly leaped in first, his voice rough.

"I'm sorry about earlier. I . . . I hadn't thought it through. Like you said. Sergeant Kinchloe and Captain Luck explained it to me. Why it's—why _I'm_ dangerous for you."

"I'm sorry too," Hogan answered back quietly. "You've been part of a fine crew, earned yourself a good place on a good team. That's hard to give up, especially when you have to do it for someone else, not for yourself."

Ted managed a fraction of a nod, jaw tight, staring down at the earthen floor.

"What I didn't have a chance to finish saying earlier is that I'm not trying to ground you as a flier. A pilot like you—you're too valuable for that. You have at least two choices, maybe more," Hogan offered tentatively.

Ted's lips parted in astonishment as he looked up in surprise. "I can still fly? How?"

Hogan forced himself to keep his voice steady. "You could change your name. Officially, I mean. Robert T. Hogan is too dangerous, but Theodore Mahoney isn't. Though flying over Germany would still be out—it's just too risky that you might be physically recognized if captured—so you'd have to move, maybe down to the Italian front. Or . . . you could transfer to the Pacific." He reached far down inside to summon up at least the ghost of a smile. "You could even retrain to fly fighters there, maybe. Like you originally hoped to. I could, ah, suggest it to our contacts in London, for them to pass on to the U.S. brass. If you want me to. To make up for you getting pulled out of your crew now."

Ted blinked, taking a couple of short breaths, obviously surprised. "I . . . I don't know . . . ."

"You don't have to decide this moment," Hogan broke back in, trying to ease the pressure off the younger man. "You have time; nothing's going to be decided till after you and the rest of your crew are back in England and you've all been individually and collectively debriefed. So think over what you'd like. You can, uh, talk with Captain Luck, get his advice." He had to fight to keep his tone even on the last part.

"My name wouldn't matter in the Pacific," Ted said hesitantly, after a couple of moments.

"No, it wouldn't. You could go ahead and change it . . . or not. Whatever you wanted."

"Which do you think I should do?" Ted asked him directly.

Hogan shook his head. "I can't choose for you, Ted. It's your life. Your career. You don't have obligations at this point—like a wife or kid, I mean. Though maybe you have a special girl?"

Ted shook his head. Feeling a slight pang, Hogan went on.

"Then you're nineteen with the world in front of you. It's a dangerous place right now; you already know that. So you should do what feels right for yourself, deep down in your gut. But I can say this: from what I've seen you're clearly a very capable man, and I'm sure you'll do well, whatever choice you make." His smile this time was genuine, as he looked at his son, letting all the affection he felt shine in his eyes.

Ted swallowed, his eyes suspiciously bright, then looked down and away. "No obligations, unlike you had at my age?" he asked. But there was no rancor in his voice.

Hogan sighed. "If your mother had lived, I'd never have seen her or you as obligations. Just joys." He shut his eyes for a moment, remembering Katie in the hospital, radiantly holding day-old Bobby—no, Ted—damnit, _no_, as a newborn baby he'd been _Bobby_, even if he wasn't any longer. He opened them again and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he looked at Ted intently.

"I don't know if I made a mistake letting your grandparents have you. Maybe I shouldn't have; maybe I should have kept you and raised you myself. I don't know at this point if I was thinking of what was best for the Mahoneys or for me, or even how capable I was of thinking straight about it back then, with Katie—with your mother . . . gone, so fast, so unexpectedly." His voice nearly cracked and he pushed on past that quickly. "But I do know I wanted the best for _you_, whatever that was. Everything had fallen apart for me, for _us_, but I _know_ I wanted you to grow up happy. So I made the choice that seemed best at the time." He briefly scrubbed at his face with his hands; Ted watched silently. "That's all anyone can do," Hogan added. "You don't know till later if it's the right one or wrong one. And a lot of the time, you never figure that out anyway because you don't know what would have happened if you'd chosen otherwise."

"Like me right now," Ted murmured.

Hogan nodded. "Yep. All I do know at this point is that however good or bad my choice was then, you turned out fine. Better than fine. All your family can be very proud of you, son," he added very carefully, reaching out to lightly touch Ted's knee.

In the dim light, he thought he saw Ted eyes mist over. Ted blinked rapidly a couple times, then replied with just a slight wobble in his voice, "Thanks, Dad."

Hogan smiled and squeezed lightly. "So will you tell me now what you've been up to? I'd still like to hear about those baseball games I missed, the girlfriends you've had, your graduation: anything—everything."

Ted laughed, still a little shakily. "Okay. But it'll take a while."

Hogan smiled back. "Right now, I've got nothing but time."

ooOoo

Kinch approached Carter's lab carefully. He'd been basically standing (well, sitting) guard down in the main room for the last couple of hours, making sure no one disturbed Colonel and Lieutenant Hogan. He'd heard no shouting, which seemed like a good sign, and eventually he'd heard what sounded like some distant laughter, which was an even better one. But dinner time was approaching, and roll call after it, and Colonel Hogan was going to have to go back up above for a bit.

As he drew near the lab, he could overhear the lieutenant's voice, animatedly telling a story.

". . . so right between the east and west wings there's this dip, where you go down about three steps and then back up. No one's ever figured out why they built it that way, but there's this four-foot long tiled square floor space between the two sets of stairs. It just seems like wasted space, right? Just begging to have something done with it. So I get Jim and Rocky to go on a Sunday fishing trip and we bring back five small-mouth bass in a tub, still alive and not too big, and go right to the high school. We get in through a loose window we know of in the back of the building. Jim's got this big rubber sheet, which is what gave me the idea, and we line the depression between those stairs with it, fill it with water and some rocks and plants we'd brought, and then put the fish in. I'd built this eight-foot wood footbridge for the upcoming fall dance, had it stored in the woodshop, and we put it over the steps so people could actually cross over our pond. Then we put up a sign that said 'No Fishing or Removal of Zoological Specimens,' just like the one Mr. Bernhardt had over the aquarium in the science room."

Kinch put his hand over his mouth to smother his laughter. Clearly, this apple hadn't fallen far from the Hogan family tree. And judging from the colonel's laughter, he was fully appreciating his offspring's ingenuity. Kinch rapped gently at the beams of the doorway, to let them know he was there, and glanced in the room at the father and son sitting on the footlockers. His eyebrows shot up, but all he said was, "Colonel, dinner's in about fifteen minutes."

Hogan looked surprised, then down at his watch. "Didn't realize it had gotten so late." He looked back over at Ted. "I'll have to go up above for a bit. I've kept you from getting any sleep; you might want to try now. We'll bring dinner down for you guys after roll call."

"Sure," the lieutenant agreed easily as they both stood up and stretched. The colonel led the way out to the main chamber, and paused. Kinch headed on up the ladder, giving the colonel another moment with his son.

Hogan turned to Ted. "I want to give you this while I'm remembering it. It's not much, but at least it's something safe to give you, that doesn't reveal where you've been. And I think you're old enough these days to enjoy it." He reached inside his jacket, to the inner pocket, and pulled out the cigar he'd gotten from Klink earlier in the day.

Ted grinned as he accepted it, pulling it up to his nose and taking an appreciative whiff. "That's a dandy. Thanks, Dad—for everything, really," he added shyly.

Hogan nodded. "Get some sleep now, if you can."

"You give me a cigar because I'm grown up and then send me to bed like I'm a kid," Ted teased, and was answered with his father's laugh.

Shortly afterwards, Hogan climbed out of tunnel and tapped the entrance to close it. He turned and found everyone in the room very carefully not watching him. The atmosphere of tactful restraint and concern was so thick it was suffocating. There really wasn't any point in pretending they didn't all know more or less what he'd been doing for the last couple of hours.

"It's okay, fellas," he smiled. "Hostilities have ceased and an armistice is in place. I think it might even lead to a true peace."

The looks on all the men's faces lightened. Carter grinned happily, LeBeau and Newkirk nudged each other at the table, and Saunders, Addison, and Foster visibly relaxed. Garlotti, Barnes, Davis, Chapman, Greenberg, Olson and Pike, none of whom officially should have known anything about the situation, also looked much easier; Hogan wondered just how much they knew and just how far the gossip had gone. He was going to have to speak to Kinch about that; he doubted it had spread further than their barracks, but it would be better to keep a lid on it.

Kinch coughed. "Um, sir? The next time you, ah, conduct negotiations, you might want to do it in a different location."

Puzzled, Hogan looked questioningly at him. "And what was wrong with where we were?"

"Those footlockers that you two were sitting on are where Carter stores the TNT."

Hogan blanched visibly at the revelation.

"Aw, that's okay, Kinch, Colonel," Carter put in. "It's not that dangerous without the blasting caps."

"Well," Hogan responded a bit shakily, "that's something to keep in mind. At least we didn't set it off this time around."

_Author's Note: Ted's high school prank is adapted from a real one played by students (but not by me!) a few years ago at my own college._


	10. Chapter 10: Farewell

During dinner at the mess hall, Hogan fielded complaints from some of the non-accordion-playing inhabitants of Barracks 13 about what they were being forced to listen to now that Schultz had dropped off the instrument for McIntosh to practice with. After listening to a barrage of increasingly insulting descriptive similes, most of which could not have been said in the presence of the ladies' gymnastics team for decency's sake, Hogan held up his hands.

"Fellas, everything you're saying just makes it clearer that Corporal McIntosh needs the practice. I'll see if I can find him some private space for it tomorrow, but you're just going to have to put up with it for a while. With some luck, he'll get better with practice quickly. He certainly seems motivated."

The reminder of McIntosh's upcoming good fortune didn't help matters, if the jealous expressions on the men's faces were anything to go by; the fact he was practicing to play for girl athletes just added insult to injury, at least as far as his barracks mates were concerned.

"Colonel," barracks chief Burkhardt said grimly, "you're asking for a mass escape if we have to listen to much more of this."

"Escape anywhere you want, as long as it's inside camp," the colonel retorted. "There's a war on; we all have to make sacrifices."

Burkhardt huffed in resigned exasperation. "Well, I guess if it's for an important mission. . . ." he trailed off, noting an uneasy look pass quickly across Hogan's face. "It _is_ for an important mission, right? Sir?!"

"I'm sure it's going to be important," Hogan said, attempting to pacify them. "At some point."

The silent consternation on the faces of the Barracks 13 men suggested that Hogan's reassurances were soothing them about as much as McIntosh's "music."

As the delegation headed away, grumbling, Hogan and Kinch both overheard one of them say, "Will we get a purple heart if we lose our hearing from this?"

His buddy groused in return, "At least if we go deaf we won't have to listen anymore."

Hogan rolled his eyes; Kinch just grinned and shook his head.

ooOoo

Roll call finally over, Hogan headed back down to the tunnels. He found the _Lucky Strike_ crew all awake, sitting around in the sleeping alcove; apparently they'd been talking together. Ted wouldn't have gotten much sleep, if any, Hogan mused, but sometimes other things were more important—like spending time with people when you didn't know quite when you'd see them again. Hogan was sure the impending separation of the crew weighed on all of them. With luck, though—and Hogan smiled to himself, because after all they were a lucky crew—they'd see each other back in London in a week to ten days.

They all started to rise on seeing him, but Hogan gestured for them to keep their seats. Ted, sitting next to Captain Luck, welcomed him with a smile, and while the others didn't look all that enthusiastic to see him, particularly Smoot, they were all at least reasonably polite. LeBeau and Carter, climbing down behind him with dinner supplies, got a more eager reception.

"We've been talking about the trip back, sir," Luck said, digging into the turnip soup that LeBeau had stretched with a few boiled potatoes that he'd managed to scrounge, "and plans for after we all get there."

Hogan nodded, guessing that part of the conversation had involved a debate over the merits of Italy versus the Pacific. But he had told Ted to choose for himself; it wouldn't be fair to interfere at this point by asking about their conversation, tempting as that was. Instead he said, "We'll be leaving here in about four hours for the rendezvous point with the plane. It'll be me and my men, and the two of you for the plane. I'm sorry, but the rest of you will have to stay here."

Watts smirked at Luck, Smoot, Toft and Burgin. "That's a good plan, sir, given how much noise these guys made in those woods after we got shot down. I mean, it made it easy for a Tennessee woodsman like me to find them and gather us all together, though Lord knows what they'd have done without me. But it's a wonder we didn't have half the Kraut army after us. Burgin here, he tramples like an elephant for all he doesn't say much, and Toft sounds like a herd of buffalo in the bushes. Lieutenant Smoot's so tall he hits every tree branch. And Cap'n Luck hits the lower half of them. Colonel," the diminutive sergeant spoke very earnestly, only his twinkling eyes giving him away, "you relieve my mind greatly for our getaway tonight."

Captain Luck rolled his eyes at Watts, while adding a "We understand that, Colonel," for Hogan.

As they finished their dinner, Hogan was casting about for a tactful way to extract Ted without being too obvious about it when Ted saved him the trouble. "Got some more time?" he asked with a grin.

Hogan grinned back. "Yep. For a bit."

Ted nodded and, with a brief wave at his crewmates, rose to follow Hogan. This time Hogan led him just a short way away, to the antechamber where they stored their counterfeit German uniforms, stocked also with a couple of lidded wooden crates full of hats and boots that they could use for seats.

Ted looked faintly puzzled. "Why not where we were before?" he asked.

Hogan indicated the boxes and sat down on one. "I've been advised that we're better off not sitting on explosives."

Ted turned faintly green. "Uh, really?"

Hogan nodded.

"I don't want to know why you have those down here, do I?"

This time Hogan shook his head. "The less you know, the better."

"Yeah. I'm beginning to get that." Ted hesitated a moment, then said, "We only talked about me earlier, what I've been doing since you left. We didn't get around to you much, what your life's been like. I was thinking that there are a lot of questions I'd like to ask, but I'm not sure if I should, or if you can answer them if I do."

Hogan rubbed his face tiredly. "You're right. There's a lot I can't tell you, partly because a lot of it's classified. But go ahead and ask; I'll answer what I can, and just tell you flat out if I can't."

"Can you tell me about London, when you got there in '40? Not your duties—I mean, just how did you like it? That sort of stuff. Whatever you've put in the letters you've written me. And maybe some of what your life is like up there?" He pointed to the tunnel ceiling to indicate the barracks above it.

"Sure," Hogan smiled. "I can do that."

ooOoo

Hogan glanced at his watch; it was almost twenty-two hundred and he was going to have to call a halt so that they could all get ready to move out in the next hour. Ted caught the movement.

"Time to quit and get ready?" he asked quietly.

"I'm afraid so," Hogan answered, regret plainly evident on his face.

"Just one more thing," Ted said quickly. "I . . . I think I'm going to ask for that transfer to the Pacific. Captain Luck thought it would be better for my career, and he thinks I might even get a couple weeks' leave at home on the way. I thought that if I do . . . well, I was thinking I'd try to visit Bridgeport as well as Augusta."

"No," Hogan said flatly, shaking his head.

"I thought you'd be pleased," Ted faltered, obviously surprised. "That . . . you weren't happy I hadn't seen Grandma and Grandpa in so long . . . that it'd make them happy."

Hogan sighed. "I'm sure it would. I know they'd love to see you. But do you really think you could see them, sit in their living room for a day or two and listen to them worry about me, have them ask you if you've heard or know anything about me—and not tell them about this? Hide it so well that they'd never guess? Are you that good an actor? And cold hearted enough not to respond to any distress from them?"

Ted looked taken aback. "I . . . I don't know."

Hogan's face softened. "It's too much security risk, Ted. They can't know. It might leak somehow into their letters to me. And it's a lot to try to hide from them in a face-to-face visit. So it'd probably be better if you didn't see them. The same goes for the Mahoneys: you can't let them know you've been here, seen me."

Ted's face turned mulish. "They've kept your letters from me. I want those—all of them."

Hogan sighed. "Then you'll have to figure out a way of 'knowing' they have the letters to ask for them without revealing the real way that you found out." He didn't add that he privately wondered whether the letters still existed, or if they'd been burned or thrown out as they arrived. But mentioning that possibility to Ted could add fuel to the fire of his son's indignation, and he needed to avoid that. While he was grateful Ted wanted his letters, wanted to read what he'd written to him, he couldn't let that desire compromise his operation in any way. Ted would have to figure out how to manage the Mahoneys without giving it away.

"You'll have to be very careful in how you ask for them," he warned. "It might be better to wait till after the war."

Ted considered this for a moment, then shook his head. "I can tell them I wrote and heard from your parents, who mentioned that you'd been writing me. I can even write Grandma and Grandpa and ask about you to make that true. So then I can ask Mama and Pops for your letters without letting anything slip."

Hogan nodded slowly. "That could work. Just remember that you _cannot_ let your temper get the better of you on this, Ted, even if they hold out on you in some way over this. They won't like admitting to you that they've done this. I'm pretty sure they'll say they did it for your own good—and probably they genuinely believe that," he admitted reluctantly. "But if you can't control your temper on this, then don't see them in person. There are too many lives at stake here that depend on this operation staying secret."

Ted nodded his understanding, his expression sober. "I won't reveal a word about it, I promise."

Hogan reached out and squeezed his shoulder gently. "I trust you," he said, his voice slightly husky. "Please believe that I'm not trying to keep you from seeing them and the rest of the family you've got there, just needing you to be discreet about having seen me. And it should be a lot easier to do that with the Mahoneys than with my folks, since they won't ask after me like my parents would."

He swallowed against the ache in his throat that arose from knowing how much he was denying both his son and his parents by forbidding that particular visit.

"Professional responsibilities over personal concerns again?" Ted queried, biting at his lower lip. At his father's nod, he added gravely, "It costs a lot, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," Colonel Hogan admitted heavily. "Sometimes it feels like it costs the earth."

They were silent a moment, then Hogan rose to his feet.

"Does all this also mean I can't write you?" Ted asked, following suit. "I mean, the Krauts know you've been writing me, but they don't know I haven't gotten your letters. Officially from their point of view, I know where you are. Can't I start answering them? Once I did that, you could write me directly. There's not much point in you sending your letters to me at home any more."

Hogan looked at him consideringly. "Once you're reassigned, write my parents about that. They'll be very glad to hear from you, and I know they'll pass that on to me along with your address. I'll write you when I think it's safe. Just . . . be very careful about what you put in the letters to them and me. Only day-to-day personal stuff. Between that and the censors on your end . . . maybe it'll be safe."

"I'll be careful," Ted promised.

"I know," Hogan smiled, clapping him lightly on the shoulder.

ooOoo

Half an hour later, Hogan and his men were outfitted in their usual black camouflage, faces darkened against the moonlight, flashlights and guns secured to their belts. Hogan insisted that Ted and Watts similarly darken their faces, though of course they were staying in uniform, then explained the procedures for leaving the tunnel and slipping through the woods to avoid any patrols.

Hogan turned to Ted once they finished adjusting their gear. "One more thing," he said seriously. "I need your dog tags."

The others stilled at this. Ted slowly reached for the chain around his neck and wordlessly removed it, gathering the tags and chain into his right hand and gripping them tightly for a moment before handing them over to his father. Hogan held them for a couple of seconds, then turned to Captain Luck.

"Do me a favor and hold on to these till I get back?" he asked.

Luck tucked them carefully into his shirt pocket. "I'll keep them safe," he promised.

Then it was time for the _Lucky Strike_ crew to make its final goodbyes, in a flurry of handshakes, gripped shoulders, and promises to be careful. "We'll see you in London not too long from now," Luck promised the two who were leaving, to answering nods all around.

Finally, they were all standing below the tunnel exit, as Newkirk, on point, climbed the ladder to check on leaving. Hogan rested his hand on Ted's shoulder till the signal came, then he gave a gentle push and up the young lieutenant climbed, into the night woods.

ooOoo

The journey through the forest and across fields went without incident. Hogan noted that Watts could indeed move as silently as he'd claimed as they stole through the trees. Everyone worked at keeping quiet, till they finally reached the rendezvous field. Hogan deployed Carter and LeBeau at the far end of the field on opposite sides, with Kinch and Newkirk at the near end, also on opposite sides, and himself with the two _Lucky Strike_ crew in the middle, Watts across the field, also equipped with an extra flashlight.

They waited silently for the most part, shoulder to shoulder, ears straining for the sound of a motor. Finally Ted spoke very softly, just above a whisper.

"So, one other thing." Hogan glanced briefly sideways at him, interrogatively, but didn't tell him to stop. Ted went on, even more quietly, "Sergeant Kinchloe." He felt his father tense and look back at him sharply. "He seems like a good man," Ted said quickly.

Hogan's shoulders relaxed. "I'm lucky to have him. As well as the rest of my team."

Ted's teeth shone as the moon lighted his smile. "Ask him about his sister sometime."

Hogan looked at him, puzzled. "His sister?"

Ted just nodded. "He'll understand."

Hogan nodded back, letting it go for the moment. After a moment he realized he also had a final point to make. "By the way, you do realize that Ted isn't just a nickname for Theodore. It's used for Edward too, right?"

He felt Ted start next to him, then give a small laugh, immediately suppressed. "So it is," the younger man murmured. "A nickname that honors both of the most important men in my life, then."

Hogan grinned, keeping his eyes on the skies.

ooOoo

Finally they heard it—the low dull roar of a small plane, a Lysander Mk III, though it remained hard to see, its underbelly painted gray, its topside a dull matte black for night camouflage. As it passed over, Kinch signaled the code with his flashlight. The plane banked, turned, and came in low, using the lights from Hogan's team to line up for the landing, and bounced down to a textbook stop. Everyone converged on the plane, as a first lieutenant hopped out.

"Papa Bear?" he asked, glancing from face to face.

"Right," Hogan answered. "And you're . . . ?"

"Seven League Boots," the lieutenant answered with a grin.

Hogan relaxed on hearing the code name—not that anyone else was likely to have landed here without directions—but not taking chances meant always observing the formalities. "You got here without trouble?" he checked.

"Yes, sir," the lieutenant replied. "Some clouds over Antwerp with light flashes in them; could've been lightning, could've been flak, so I detoured a bit north, in case there was trouble there. Nothing else, though."

Somewhat reassured, Hogan asked next, "I take it you have our supplies?"

The lieutenant grimaced. "Yep. In five packs, as requested. They're here in the back seat."

Carter helped the lieutenant haul the substantial packs out of the plane, and the others carried them off to the side, where they wouldn't be in the way of the take-off, Newkirk swearing under his breath about the weight of them. "I'll weigh another four stone at least carrying this," he grumbled.

"I don't think they sent us rocks," Carter frowned, puzzled. "I mean, why would they do that? It's not like rocks would do us any good. We could find plenty of them around here if we needed them."

This prompted Newkirk to stare disbelievingly at him and mutter, "At some point you Yanks ought to learn to speak English."

"You need to get back in the air," Hogan announced reluctantly once the cargo was safely unloaded. As his men hiked back across the field to take up their flashlight positions for the takeoff, he shook hands briefly with Watts, then turned to Ted as the sergeant and the pilot began to get into the plane.

His heart in his mouth, Hogan stepped forward and wrapped Ted in his arms tightly, feeling the pressure from Ted's arms equally firmly around him. He swallowed hard, then whispered hoarsely, "Fly safe, son."

"You too, Dad," Ted murmured in his ear.

Then they both pushed away from each other simultaneously. They looked hard at each other, each trying to fix the other's features in his mind.

For a moment, looking at nineteen-year-old Ted in the moonlight, Hogan could see the fifteen-year-old Bobby he'd left behind four years earlier, as well as the twelve-year-old boy he'd been before that, and looking farther back, in his mind's eye he beheld the one-year-old toddler who'd reawakened his dead heart, and even the day-old baby from the two happy days he'd had as father and husband, long ago when he'd been only nineteen himself. He hoped to God that they'd both survive and he'd have the chance to see the twenty-one- or twenty-two-year-old Ted of the future when the war was over.

Ted tore himself away, climbed the port-side ladder into the rear cockpit, fitting himself in behind Watts, and slammed and latched the entrance tightly as Hogan backed away to a safe distance, his eyes never leaving the plane. He thought he saw a wave from within as the motor roared, and lifted his own hand in farewell, dropping it as the plane moved forward past him.

The plane taxied off across the field, down the runway created by the lights Kinch, Newkirk, LeBeau, and Carter held, gathering speed, then it lifted off, clearing the field and the trees beyond. Hogan kept his eyes on it as it faded into a silent speck in the moon-lit sky and disappeared from sight altogether as his men hiked back across the field to join him, forming a loose circle and wordlessly eying him, unsure what to say.

Hogan reached down for his pack, picked it up, and shouldered his burden. "Let's get this stuff back to camp," he said roughly, and headed out, as his men silently followed suit.

ooOoo

_Author's Notes: _

_1) A "stone" is a common British weight measurement, equivalent to 14 pounds, or 6.34 kilograms. It is most commonly used in the United Kingdom and some other Commonwealth countries to describe body weight._

_2) I don't know if the RAF ever actually landed courier planes in Germany, but they certainly did in Occupied France to supply the French Resistance, to insert and retrieve agents, and to pick up downed Allied airmen who had evaded capture. Squadron 138 (Special Duties) was formed in August 1941 to work for the Special Operations Executive (SOE). They often used Lysander Mk IIIs, chosen because of their exceptional performance in landing on make-shift airstrips behind enemy lines. They were modified with a ladder to ease their passengers' quick access to the cockpit and with a large drop tank to carry extra fuel and extend their range. They were unfortunately easy targets for the Luftwaffe if spotted, but they had a good track record for sneaking in and out of Vichy France, landing in fields in the fashion I've described. For the sake of the story (and following the general Hogan's Heroes fictional premise of strong networked underground resistance in Germany itself), I've extended their reach to western Germany as support for Hogan's operation. See Hugh Verity's __We Landed by Moonlight: Secret RAF Landings in France 1940-1944__ for a real-life account, or the gripping historical novel __Code Name Verity__ by Elizabeth Wein, which is based on Squadron 138's duties as well as on the experiences of women pilots who flew planes for Britain's Air Transport Auxiliary, to free up male pilots for combat. You can see a Lysander Mk III painted matte black with the passenger ladder in the illustration on Wikipedia's page on the Lysander._

_3) Apologies to any accordion players out there who feel miffed about McIntosh's poor playing: remember that he is, after all, just a beginner. I actually have a friend who plays accordion, and I enjoy her music. But one played badly by a beginner is a different matter from one played well!_


	11. Chapter 11: Epilogue

As Hogan and his team trudged wearily back into the radio room, Luck, Smoot, Toft, and Burgin got up from their bunks, where they'd been sitting, to help the team pull off their heavy packs.

"What did they send do, send the whole commissary to you?" Smoot grunted as he lifted the pack off LeBeau enough for the Frenchman to slip his arms more easily out of the straps.

LeBeau let out a small groan of relief. "It has to last a good while," he answered, massaging his aching shoulders.

"They got off all right, I take it," Luck asked, giving Hogan's pack the same boost while Burgin helped Carter, and Toft helped Newkirk, who turned and helped Kinch.

"Yeah. They should be reaching the channel in another hour if everything goes well. The pilot said he'd had a smooth ride over; we'll hope for the best on their way back," Hogan replied bleakly.

No one said the thought uppermost in all of their minds: the moonlit night, its visibility so perfect for flying, would not be wasted by the RAF in its regular bombing raids, and Nazi anti-aircraft guns and fighters would be lying in wait for those bombers. Perhaps the Lysander's night camouflage would protect it; they could only hope so.

Luck simply nodded, then he dug into his shirt pocket and pulled out Ted's dog tags. Handing them to Hogan, he said, "You'll want to hold onto these." Hogan nodded, fingering them gently before slipping them into his trouser pocket.

Luck, Smoot, Toft, and Burgin were ready to turn in by the time Hogan and his men had stowed the supplies, cleaned off their faces, and changed back into their uniforms. Hogan carefully tucked Ted's dog tags into his own uniform shirt pocket before shrugging on his jacket. He'd have to find a place down here to keep them—it wouldn't do to have them up in the barracks where the guards might find them. But for now, just for tonight, he wanted them safely at hand, where he could touch them, feel their weight. A touch of superstition, perhaps, but somehow it helped ease his heart just a tad, having them so close. As he had the night before, Kinch blew out all the oil lights but left on the electric lamp over the radio.

Hogan turned to his crew and gestured to the ladder. "You fellas go on up and get to bed."

"What about you, Colonel?" Carter asked, his forehead creased.

Hogan glanced over at the radio. "I'll stay down here, monitor the radio till London gives us the word they got back."

Kinch put his hands in his pockets and slouched against the support brace by the radio table. "Uh, Colonel, that's my job, you know."

Hogan smiled briefly back at him. "I know. But I can tell I'm not going to sleep, so I figured I'd keep an eye out down here. Better than pacing my quarters in the dark. You fellas go on up, get some shuteye. You've earned it."

Newkirk, LeBeau, and Carter looked at each other, and Kinch waved them to the ladder. But after they'd climbed up, Kinch lingered below, then pulled the trap door closed. Hogan lifted his brows in surprise.

"I'm not going to sleep either, so I may as well keep you company," Kinch replied to the unspoken question with a casual shrug of his right shoulder.

Hogan regarded him for a moment, then shrugged back. "We can both take naps tomorrow, I guess." He settled himself down on the bunk by the radio, leaning back against the tunnel wall and drawing his legs up, to rest his arms on his knees. When Kinch started to sit down on the stool at the radio table that he normally occupied, Hogan patted the bunk next to him instead. "It's going to be a long wait. Might as well make ourselves as comfortable as we can."

Kinch dropped down beside him, leaning back and stretching his legs out. They sat for a minute or so in silence.

"So," Hogan drawled softly. "I hear you have a sister."

Kinch cut his glance sideways, seeing an inquisitive look on the Colonel's face. He stroked his mustache. "Yeah, I do," he answered with a slight grin. "Would you like to hear about her?"

"Yeah," Hogan answered back affably, "I would."

Through the dark hours the two men sat there in the small circle of light, talking softly of family and pre-war times, waiting in hope for London to call with the good news that Seven League Boots had made it home.

_The End_

_Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed this story. While I had it fully drafted when I posted it, I've revised and expanded it, often based on comments from readers. So it owes its final form to the many generous suggestions and ideas you readers have posted, and I am grateful for all the enthusiasm you've expressed for my admittedly radical premise._


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